Intro

By now it’s no secret that big changes to Marriott’s merger with SPG are underway and others in the process of being finalized.  Initially those changes were set to take place on August 4th, but that date has since been pushed back to August 18th.  I assume that the dates are now set in stone and won’t change, but never say never I guess.

Early in my points career I didn’t place any emphasis on SPG points, citing a small sign up bonus (generally of 25,000 points) as a weak enticement to get into the program.  Only over the past couple of years have I changed my mind and made efforts to collect those points.  Over the past year, and especially 6 months, I’ve made a dedicated push to acquire SPG points.  At the beginning of 2018 I set a goal of acquiring over a million SPG points, which I accomplished a few months ago.  At the beginning of August, I had a little under 1.2 million SPG points in my account and was trying to figure out what to do with them.

First Impressions

When some of the initial news of Marriott’s plans as it pertains to SPG were released, I was traveling through parts of Eastern Europe.  While in a coffee shop one day, I did a bit of browsing for more information.  Initially the points blogosphere seemed to be enamored with Marriott’s announced program changes.  The Points Guy (TPG) Brian Kelly, in his interview with David Fluek of Marriott, was pretty typical in the positivity regarding the new changes.

Although TPG knows his stuff, I was much less optimistic about the Marriott/SPG merger in general, and didn’t share the exuberance from similar blogs about some of the announced changes.  I’m not saying that Brian Kelly is wrong, but just that he is a much different customer than I am.  When I looked at the category changes as someone who doesn’t normally pay to stay in hotels, one idea stayed with me: inflation.  As a result, I decided that I needed to act now before my SPG/Marriott points became worth significantly less in the near future.

Marriott Rewards for Airline Miles

My primary goal for collecting SPG points has been the possibility of transferring points into airline miles, with a secondary goal of possibly using them at SPG properties.  Marriott properties have never been of much interest to me, as I can’t remember the last time that I stayed at a Marriott property, and personally I view SPG’s properties to be much more aligned to my tastes than those of Marriott.  My SPG and Marriott accounts are linked, and all respective points for those programs have been converted to Marriott points.  With airline miles being my primary goal, I set out to find the biggest value for my Marriott points.

Marriott has an award chart that allows members to purchase airline miles with points.  Here’s the current chart:

The best deal/option on this chart is with United Airlines, and secondarily with the two airline packages on the left.  I don’t have a need for, or interest in, Southwest Airlines so that option wasn’t considered.

The most airline miles for Marriott points lies with United Airlines at the 25,000 and 50,000 mile mark.  Since I collected SPG points, I wanted to know how many airline miles I was getting for each SPG point.  If I purchased airline miles directly with Marriott points, I’d get 1.34 and 1.07 airline miles for each SPG point (or 25,000 miles / 18,667 SPG points and 50,000 miles / 37,333 SPG points).  That’s not horrible, but I thought more value might be had elsewhere.  That brought me to the Marriott Nights and Flights Hotel + Air packages.

Marriott Rewards for Airline Miles + Hotel Certificates

Marriott has 5 Nights and Flights Hotel + Airline package options with the same airlines listed in the previous award charts.  The difference here is that these packages allow customers the ability to purchase airline miles along with 7 night certificates at a any of its hotel properties in a variety of hotel categories. Marriott’s Hotel + Airline award charts will be in effect until August 18th at which time the packages become much more expensive.  The “positive” news with the new hotel and airline award chart is that:

1) It’s simpler – only 2 options for members to choose from, down from the current 5 selections (personally I prefer the 5 current options).  When I hear large corporations, especially after a merger, say they are making it simpler or better in some way for customers, I generally ask how they are screwing the consumer.  Here Marriott condensing the award charts into fewer options for customers and raising package prices.

2) More airline partners – there are more and even better, airline partners in the new Marriott award chart to choose from (albeit with poorer transfer rates than the current award chart).  Still the airline list in the new award chart is very nice.  Thank you Marriott.

Here’s Marriott’s current Nights and Flights Hotel + Air package linked with United:

In United’s Reward’s Plus chart, the one thing that stuck out at me right away was that for only an additional 70,000 Marriott points (23,333 SPG points), you could get an additional 77,000 United miles (along with the same 7 night category 1-5 hotel package).  Just as in the option for buying airline miles with Marriott points, Marriott’s special partnership with United gives customers a 10% bonus in value vs. any other hotel + air packages.  I already have a healthy United Airline miles balance as well as plenty of Ultimate Rewards that can be instantly converted to United miles.  As a result, this option is definitely appealing, but I kept exploring.  Below are Marriott’s other Airline + Hotel packages.

Hotel + Air Package 1 has 12 different airlines that have similar transfer (high) rates to United.  Some of the airline partners in Hotel + Air Package 2 are interesting, but 270,000 Marriott points gets 35,000 fewer miles than Hotel + Air Package 1 and 47,000 fewer miles than United’s package, all for the same (7 night) Category 1-5 certificates.

Hotel + Air Package 3 has the same miles and certificate rates as does Package 1, however it’s only linked with Southwest Airlines.  Package 4 is linked with JetBlue but has the worst airline miles and certificate combination of any of the package options.  Due to the poor airline miles included in Hotel + Air Package 2 and 4, they were not seriously considered, and since Southwest Airlines isn’t of interest for me, that package option 3 also wasn’t considered.

Hotel + Air Package 1

Initially I was very high on Virgin Atlantic (VA) miles and thought about using almost all of my Marriott points to purchase VA travel packages.  Virgin Atlantic has some valuable award sweetspots, including Delta awards that are much lower than the airline’s own awards.  However, Virgin Atlantic also has significant fuel surcharges for many awards.  In the end, not knowing if and when I’d actually use Virgin Atlantic sweetspots along with the threat of high fuel surcharges steered me away from a Virgin Atlantic travel package.  I also steered away from taking current award sweetspots into heavy consideration, because I’m basically investing in future travel, not a current trip(s).  Airline award sweetspots are bound to change by the time I actually redeem the airline miles I’ll be accumulating here.

I also considered mileage expiration time frames for each of the airlines in Hotel + Air Package 1.  Frontier has a poor policy of mileage expiration after just 6 months, but fortunately they aren’t a top tier airline and were never considered as an option in the first place.  Delta miles never expire, but I don’t go out of my way to collect those miles, and were also not seriously considered.  I love travel in South America, but GOL/Varig has a hard mileage expiration after 36 months, meaning if you don’t use all of the miles by that time, they are gone.  As a result, GOL/Varig was also gone from consideration.

In the end I chose travel packages with United, Alaska, and American Airlines.  The three airlines have good partner airlines, routes to places I enjoy traveling, and also offer the highest rates for Marriott’s travel packages.  But I wasn’t done there.

My Play

Marriott’s Hotel + Airline travel packages are great for a variety of reasons, one of which is because they include a 7 night hotel stay (a 5 night is available too but not publicly promoted) at a very small additional point cost.  However, since my primary interest was miles and not a 7 day (or 5 day) hotel stay, I didn’t have much need for the hotel certificates.

I ended up purchasing 12 travel packages with United, Alaska, and American Airlines.  That generated 1,500,000 airline miles and 84 free nights at Marriott hotels (category 1-5).  An interesting aspect of the travel packages is that once they are processed, the airline miles are sent to the selected airlines.  That transfer cannot be reversed.  The hotel portion of the package can be reversed though, with each refunded category 1-5 package worth 45,000 Marriott points (or 15,000 SPG points).  Since I’m trying to gather as many airline miles as possible, I called Marriott and cancelled all of the travel packages (in bunches, not at once).  Those cancellations gave me another 540,000 Marriott points (or enough for 2 additional hotel + air travel packages) to work with.

The above chart is United’s Hotel + Air travel package.  The category 1-5 hotel package provides the most miles for Marriott points.  That makes sense because as hotel categories rise, they should naturally require more points.  Basically by trading back the hotel certificate portion of the travel package, I gained additional Marriott points, thus reducing my costs for the airline miles (shown in green above and below).

Hotel + Air travel package via Alaska and American Airlines produced similar results and gave me a higher rate of return than I would have had by just purchasing airline miles with Marriott points.  

Certainly I could have sold the hotel certificates that I purchased.  I think the going rate for a 7 night category 1-5 Marriott hotel stay is around $350-$425.  That might mean $5,000 in funds from selling all of the certificate that I had.  That money sounds nice, but finding buyers for 14 separate hotel certificates isn’t something I wanted to get into.  As I said before, I was primarily after the airline miles.

Conclusion

I chose Hotel + Air Packages that offered nice partner options, route coverage, some award sweetspot exposure, and high rates of return for my accumulated SPG points.  Even with all of the hotel certificate cancellations, over 200,000 Marriott Rewards remain in my account with more to come after my SPG statements close this month.  I was sad to see my SPG points get cashed out, but eventually something had to give.  The merger and announced Marriott program changes drove me to the decision to act now and not wait.

Some Marriott booking agents aren’t very familiar with the Nights and Flights Hotel + Airline travel packages.  Some also aren’t aware that you can cancel the hotel portion of the offering, while some even told me that “it wasn’t possible and was against Marriott’s rules and policies”.  So there can be some obstacles when trying to cancel a Hotel + Airline package and usually requires a manager to do so.

I understand that many people want the hotel certificates as part of a travel package and that’s fine.  This is just a shared example of a different path.