Are Marriott Bonvoy’s flight ticket redemptions a good deal?
One of the Starwood features that was adopted by Marriott after it bought the company was the ability to redeem your hotel points for a flight ticket.
Two facts make this offer sound quite attractive. Marriott Bonvoy is buying you a cash flight ticket so there is no problem with reward availability.
And, because it is a cash ticket, you will receive airline miles and tier points when you fly.
Historically, looking at the cash value of your Marriott / Starwood points, this deal was terrible value. Things have changed. The Marriott Bonvoy flight booking system is priced in $ and, with the £ hovering around $1.35 compared to the $1.65 it was during the key Starwood years, it’s worth taking another look.
If you want to book a ticket, you need to go to this page of the Marriott Bonvoy website and click on ‘Go by Road, Air, or Both’.
What do I get for my Marriott Bonvoy points when I book a flight?
Marriott does not publish a pricing table for flight redemptions.
However, Starwood DID publish one before Marriott bought it and it has not changed substantially. The chart below is ROUGHLY correct but may be a few thousand points too low in some cases.
Based on the cash cost of your flight, the number of Marriott Bonvoy points you need is approximately:
up to $150 30,000 Marriott Bonvoy points
$150-$215 45,000
$215-$280 60,000
$280-$345 75,000
$345-$410 90,000
$410-$475 105,000
$475-$540 120,000
$540-$605 135,000
$605-$670 150,000
$670-$735 165,000
$735-$800 180,000
$800-$865 195,000
$865-$930 210,000
$930-$995 225,000
$995-$1,060 240,000
…. and so on.
Looking at a few random examples I ran yesterday:
- a $146 ticket came out at 37,500 points
- a $259 ticket came out at 65,000 points
- a $570 ticket came out at 145,000 points
These are all slightly worse rates than the list above, but not by much.
These three examples work out at 0.39c, 0.40c and 0.39c per Marriott Bonvoy point.
At the current exchange rate, it means you are getting 0.29p per point.
Let’s be clear. 0.29p is not great value. We target 0.5p when redeeming Marriott Bonvoy points and you can do better.
It isn’t totally terrible, however, and ‘totally terrible’ is what you expect when a redemption involves the programme handing over hard cash to a third party. If you earn all of your Marriott Bonvoy points via business travel, which makes them effectively ‘free’, then you might consider this acceptable.
For comparison, remember that Marriott Bonvoy points convert to Avios at the ratio of 3:1, although this improves to 2.4:1 if you convert in chunks of 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.
If you value an Avios point at 1p, then getting 0.33p per Marriott Bonvoy point by converting them to Avios at 3:1 (assuming you convert fewer than 60,000 Marriott points) is not a lot better than getting 0.29p by redeeming directly for a flight – and you have zero availability problems and you will earn miles back when you fly!
On this basis, you might find redeeming Marriott Bonvoy points for flights offers some value. You can find out more on the Marriott website here.