Earn up to 11 MileagePlus Miles Per $1 Spent with Marriott

Earlier this month, United and Marriott decided to hook-up and start a very unique partnership. You can read about it here, here, and here. This post isn't about that partnership, but what has resulted in that partnership.

One of the outcomes of the partnership is the ability to earn up to 11 miles per $1 spent at Marriott.

Earlier this week, Loyalty Lobby wrote about an offer that earns United Award Miles for every dollar spent on Marriott gift cards. From August 7th until September 7th, you can earn up to 5 MileagePlus miles per $1 spent on gift cards up to 7,500 miles.

I purchased Marriott Gift Cards for the holidays last year. These are actual gift cards, not e-gift cards. You will receive your purchase in the mail. The cheapest option for delivery only cost $1 and gets the card to you in less than 10 business days.

My plan is to use the gift cards for future hotel stays. Gift cards can't be used for prepaid nights. However, some people have indicated that they have gotten local hotel staff to reverse prepaid hotel stay charges allowing guests to use a Marriott gift card.

+ 5 Miles Per $1


Pay for the gift cards with your Chase Sapphire Card. Since you are buying directly from Marriott, you will earn 2 Ultimate Reward Points per $1. Ultimate Reward points can be transferred to MileagePlus miles at a 1:1 ratio


+2 Miles Per $1

When its time to book your Marriott stay, go through the Ultimate Reward Shopping Portal. Currently, you can earn 2 Ultimate Reward Points per $1 spent by going through the Portal. Points are only earned on the base rate of the hotel, not the taxes. You will need to put a credit card down to hold the room. The gift cards won't work to hold your reservation, but you can pay with the gift card later.

+2 Miles Per $1

The final piece of the puzzle involves earning United MileagePlus miles; instead, of Marriott Reward points. Stays at JW Marriott, Autograph Collection, Renaissance Hotels, Marriott Resorts, Ritz-Carlton, Edition, and Gaylord hotels earn 2 miles per US$ spent. Stays at all other Marriott chains earn only 1 mile per US$.

United miles can only be earned for Marriott stays, if you switch your earning preference. To do this, sign into your Marriott Reward account and go to "My Account Overview."

Click on the Member Profile button:

 Now, click on Earning Preferences:

Finally, choice airline miles, pick your preferred airline and enter you frequent flyer number

From now on, you will earn airlines miles; instead, of Marriott Points.

+ Up to 2 Miles Per $1

Let's put it together now:

 +5 Miles - Purchase Gift Cards (Pay for Future Stays with Cards)
 +2 Miles - Purchase Gift Cards with Chase Sapphire
 +2 Miles - Go Through Ultimate Reward shopping portal to Book Hotel Nights
 +2 Miles - Switch earning preference to airline miles - stay at higher level Marriott Hotels
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+11 Miles per $1

I have earned miles for each of the steps outlined above and earned miles. The only one I have not tried out is paying for hotel nights with gift cards and earning miles through the Ultimate Reward shopping portal. In theory, it should work.

A few things to remember:

          1) The gift card promotion starts 8/7 and ends 9/7

          2) You need to book your hotel nights through Ultimate Reward Portal

          3) You need to switch your earning preference to airline miles and put in your MileagePlus number

Yes, this is not the easiest way of earning United miles. It has multiple steps and requires some planning in advance. I have two Marriott stays in the next 90 days and I plan on paying them with gift cards, only after booking the stays through the shopping portal. My stays are at lower level Marriott hotels, so I will only earning 10 miles per $1. Still not to shabby . . .

 Is there any better than getting miles for doing what you were planning on doing anyway?

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Marriott's Unexpected Bonus is Unexpectedly Popular

Marriott has a promotion at the moment called Unexpected Bonus. Under this promotion, one earns a free night after second paid stays.

One needs to register here on July 31st and stay twice, September 2, 2013.

I am not a Marriott guy. My Marriott Rewards account has zero points in it. However, I signed up for this promotion, because one of my goals for 2013 is to sign-up for more promotions regardless of the likely I will participate. 

What was unexpected about this promotion was that twice this week, someone brought this promotion up out of the blue. First, it was Cash Back Boy. Then, my boss. Both of them asked if I had heard about the Unexpected Bonus from Marriott and was it worth registering. Say What! How did you know about this promotion? 

Marriott's Unexpected Bonus has become Unexpectedly Popular. Both of these people do not read points blogs. Therefore, Marriott must have done a great job with their advertising the promotion.

My strategy for this promotion is to only use it if you have upcoming stays that can be steered toward Marriott. I don't this is a mattress run promotion. Maybe if you have one stay under your belt and you can find a very cheap second stay. For instance, Cash Back Boy mentioned that we steer any upcoming hotels stays to Marriott, so that we can use the free night for college football.

The bigger question is Cash Back Boy coming over to the dark side?

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No Hotel Room For You!!!

Now this is the story all about how my life almost got flipped, turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute, just sit right there, and I'll tell you how I almost got fired this week....

You see part of my job working as a junior loan officer is being an assistant to a senior loan officer. 90% of the time my assistance involves mortgage work. However, 10% of the time I need to help her with things in her personal life. Think Meryl Streep in Devils Wears Prada. Earlier this week, my boss learned about a death in the family and had to go to a funeral, at the very last minute. I was asked to book her a hotel room for that night. After checking Orbitz to see which hotels were in the area, I went to the Marriott website to book a room for that night.

At 10pm, I get a frantic call from my boss telling me that when she arrived at the hotel, she was told that the hotel was sold-out and they did not have a room for her. The Marriott employee told her that they had been sold out for a conference most of the week and they had no idea how she was able to book a room. However, the good news is that they had booked her a room at a comparable hotel down the road.

When she arrived at this "golf resort" hotel: the first thing she noticed was that she was the only woman at the hotel. The next thing she noticed was that the hotel was directly out of a Mad Men episode. The hotel seemed not to have been updated since the 1950s, shiny curtains, gold and green fabric walls and ash trays everywhere. 

After hearing my boss' story, I started to wonder, what rights do people who book rooms, but arrive to oversold hotels?

The answer is a none. Not a single right. Unlike the airline industry, who, by law, have to compensate you for denying you boarding due to overselling,  no laws govern hotel overbooking. Each hotel chain has its own policy about helping customers in this situation.

My research turned up that very few hotel chains have policies regarding oversold customers. Worse, finding those policies on individual chain's websites turned into a needle in a hay stake hunt.

The easiest to find was Hyatt. In Hyatt's Reservation FAQ, we find this little gem:

What is Hyatt's reservation guarantee?

If you book a room on Hyatt.com and prepay with a credit card, Hyatt will have a room reserved for you when you arrive, or will provide, at no cost to you:

·                  A free night at a comparable hotel

·                  Free transportation to and from that hotel

·                  One free telephone call to advise your family where you can be reached

Now, Starwood was a little more difficult to find, but this little paragraph was present before making hitting submit on a reservation:

 For reservations guaranteed with a form of payment at time of booking, rooms are held until hotel check-out time the day following arrival. For reservations not guaranteed with a form of payment at time of booking, rooms are held until set cancellation time per the rules of the reservation. In the event more guests arrive than can be accommodated due to hotel overbooking or an unforeseen circumstance, and hotel is unable to hold rooms consistent with this room hold policy, hotel will attempt to accommodate guests, at its expense, at a comparable hotel in the area for the oversold night(s), and will pay for transportation to that hotel.

Marriott has a whole page devoted towards reservation guarantees. However, the page makes it seem that these guarantees are only for people with Gold or Platinum Status. For example, you have Platinum status and arrive at a JW Marriott to find no room available for you with a reservation, this pages says $200 and 2 Room Certificates should be coming your way. What about a person like my boss with no status?

I spent time on Hilton's , Kimpton and Choice Hotel's websites and found no mention of what might happen to a customer arriving to a sold-out hotel with a reservation. So, I decided to call each reservation line to see what I could find out:

Choice Hotels: I was told that it is up to each local hotel to decided how to handle customer in oversold hotels.

Kimpton Hotels: The general policy is to find you a hotel nearby at the expense of the hotel.

Hilton Hotels: This was like pulling teeth. My first call, I was told that this would never happen, we do not oversell our hotels. My second call, I was told that the oversold hotel would direct me to call the 1-800 number to be rebooked. My third call, the agent told me that I should arrive early to the hotel to avoid this from happening. Very reassuring!

It is sad that there are no protections for hotel consumers like there is with airlines. Yes, I understand that hotels have an interest to have full hotels, but they do so without any risk. There is not penalty for there overselling actions. Worse, many of these hotels leave it up to the individual hotels to make the call of what the customer should received. Can you imagine getting off a plane at midnight, taking the airport shuttle to the oversold hotel only to find a desk agent unwilling to help you because he/she is having a bad day? I bet it happens more often than not.

Hotel chains need to have written policies on how to handle these situations. It should not be left to local hotel employees to decided what to give oversold customers. That will only lead to inconsistencies and even worse very unhappy customers. And I know this is probably going to far, these policies should be posted on their websites. Customers should have the comfort of knowing that a reservation will result in a room at the hotel, but on the slim chance a room is not available, you will be taken care of.

In the end, I still have a job, but a disgruntle boss. But at least she did not ask me to get her the new Harry Potter book by COB.


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Follow us on Twitter @doit4thepoints! Have a question for us? E-mail us at chris@doitforthepoints.com or jd@doitforthepoints.com

Marriott's "What's Your Travel Type" Contest Ends Tomorrow

The Marriott "What's Your Travel Type"contest has been written about extensively with lots of promos out there in blog land to win additional points. (Here...Here...Here...etc.) But it is worth noting that the contest ends tomorrow at 4:00 pm ET. But, you can enter once a day so if you hurry you can get two more entries in!

The prizes are everything from 6 nights/5 days at a JW Marriott anywhere in the world to a 7 day/ 6 night trip to Madrid, Spain.

We don't have any prizes to offer...but I am curious what your favorite prize was, and what Marriott properties you would use your prize on?