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First quarter 2018 promotions are out and you can now register for each one. It always makes sense to register for these right away as you never know when you may have an unexpected stay and find that the promo comes in handy. Details of the SPG, Marriott, and Hilton promos follow. We’ve previously written about IHG’s latest accelerate promo (and my targeted offer for that promo was pretty good compared to these other promos).
Marriott: MegaBonus
Promotion details:
- Valid for stays from January 16, 2018 to April 15, 2018
- Earn 2,000 bonus points per stay starting with your second stay
- Earn 1,000 additional bonus points if your stay includes a weekend night (Fri/Sat in most of the world; Thurs/Fri in the Middle East)
- Maximum of 50,000 bonus points through this promotion
- You must register by March 31, 2018 — click here to register
Quick Thoughts
If you often have one-night stays for business that are paid for by your employer, I think this could be pretty appealing in the sense that it’s very easy and the points could add up with many one-night paid stays. Otherwise, this one is a snoozer. The 2,000 points per stay (starting with stay #2) are worth about $14.40 according to our Reasonable Redemption Values – and since that only begins with your second stay, your average return per stay drops from there. Marriott has been giving away 1,000 points almost every week with their Twitter promotions, making it a bit easier to accumulate the points for an award stay. That might make this promotion more appealing for some. Personally, I’ll take the points from this promotion if circumstance puts me in the situation to earn them, but 2K per stay starting with the second stay isn’t enough to get me to switch business to Marriott. If you’ve got a number of one-night weekend night stays, it might be more appealing.
SPG: Great Weeks, Great Weekends
Promotion Details
- Valid for stays from January 16, 2018 to April 15, 2018
- Earn double Starpoints starting with your second stay
- Earn 500 bonus Starpoints when your stay includes a weekend night (Fri/Sat in most of the world; Thurs/Fri in the Middle East)
- Not all properties are participating — see the listing of participating properties here
- You must register by March 31, 2018 – click here to register
Quick Thoughts
SPG’s first quarter promo is a bit tougher to gauge since its value will largely depend on the average room rate you’re paying. Remember that 1 Starpoint = 3 Marriott points, so if your average stay comes out to more than $667, you’ll earn more points with this promotion (and the weekend bonus is worth more since 500 Starpoints = 1500 Marriott points). On the other hand, if your stays are usually less than $667, you’d be better off sticking with Marriott.
Hilton Points Unlimited
Promotion Details
- Valid for stays from January 1, 2018 to April 30, 2018
- Earn 2,000 bonus points on every stay
- Earn an additional 10,000 points on every 5 stays
- Award stays count according to the Hilton Honors Flyertalk rep
- Click here to register now
Quick Thoughts
Hilton’s first quarter promo isn’t much more exciting than Marriott or SPG except for the fact that the Hilton Honors Flyertalk rep confirmed that award stays would count for this promo. According to our Reasonable Redemption Values, 2K points is only worth about $9 — so it’s not a huge win, but not bad if you’ve already got award stays in mind. The additional 10K points means that you’d have earned about $90 worth of points after 5 stays (20K points = about $90) vs $57.60 after 5 stays with Marriott that don’t include a weekend since the first stay earns no bonus (2K x 4 = 8K). The Hilton promo looks like the better deal to me if your stays will come in multiples of 5.
Bottom line
None of these promotions will excite me enough to think too hard about where to stay during the first quarter of 2018 — I’ll probably be more loyal to price and location than brand based on these promos. However, it always makes sense to register now for these promos so you don’t miss out if you make any stays in 2018.
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[…] badly Marriott fared compared to all the other chains. Having said that, if we’d used their Q1 MegaBonus promotion rather than Q2, they’d have done better. In particular, the first scenario would’ve […]
[…] SPG, Marriott, Hilton 2018 Q1 promotions open for registration (Promotions end 4/15/18 or 4/30/18. Register by 3/31/18) […]
[…] or not you see these promotions as valuable will depend on the nature of your upcoming stays. The Q1 promotions for Marriott and SPG offered more bonus points, but only on your second stay. That type of deal works out especially […]
[…] won’t steal any of my business away from competitors. I do wonder if it might stack with Starwood’s first quarter promotion, which would make it more interesting but still not really exciting for […]
[…] A bonus of 500 or 1,000 World of Hyatt points per night is a somewhat decent bonus, especially seeing as it includes award stays. I also like that they’re awarded from your first rather than second stay (I’m looking at you Marriott and SPG.) […]
I continue to get error message on the Marriott MegaBonus registration link – saying it’s not available? Is this targeted?
I think your math is off. Spg promotion parity with Marriot is 2000 / 6 = $333, (instead of $667 quoted in article above), since conversion rate is 3x, and SPG double points means 2 extra points per $.
I typically have multi-night stays that easily go past $333, so the Marriott promotion is uninspiring for me. Too bad.
Recent SPG and Marriott promos have not been competitive for high revenue travelers.
What about IHG accelerate?