The best way to maximize the value of your Marriott Rewards points is to transfer your points to a Marriott airline partner and book virtually-free airline tickets.
Marriott offers MVCI owners the option of booking 5-night Travel Packages. This allows you to transfer your points to any one of 36 airlines in increments ranging from 50,000-132,000 miles. And you receive a 5-night hotel stay at the hotel category of your choice to use on the same trip or anytime over the next 2 years (when extended).
The value of using your points can be over $10,000 if, for example, you were to transfer enough miles to get 2 Business Class airline tickets to Europe, and a 5 night hotel stay. You would need approximately 500,000 Marriott Rewards points but this converts to huge value!
The key to using a Travel Package is that the miles you transfer must be used for booking AWARD SEATS. As many of you may know, finding award seat availability for the dates you want and decent routing can be an enormous challenge, often resulting in failure. And with 36 airline partners, how would you possibly know which partner to choose?
Marriott Rewards staff are unable to assist you with this process. All they will do is transfer the miles you request to the airline you tell them. But you never want to transfer miles unless you know the award seats are available for you to book. And then the availability you see today could be gone by the time you transfer the miles, since most airlines will not hold the seats for you.
With airline mergers resulting in fewer award seats being made available, this process has become more time consuming and trickier than ever. But the financial upside is so great that it is worth trying. The good news is that we are specialists in booking award seats with all points programs and have a nearly 100% success rate so don’t despair, just contact us and start maximizing those points.
