Marriott dumped their award charts on March 29th, which is bad news for the most expensive Marriott properties since their award prices are no longer capped to the previous category pricing ranges.
Caution: Marriott may have made point values look good in the near term in order to avoid bad press.
Methodology
In order to determine the value of Marriott points, I collected real-world cash prices and point prices. Within each market, I identified the first three search results with a guest rating of 4.1 or better, and I recorded both cash and award prices for three dates each: a weekday, a weekend, and a holiday weekend.
- Why U.S. only? U.S. consumers are known to spend most of their points and miles on domestic travel. Since the majority of this blog’s audience resides in the U.S. we opted for a U.S. centric view of point values.
- Why Guest Ratings? The goal wasn’t to find the 3 best Marriott hotels in each market. Instead, the goal was to find the 3 Marriott bookable hotels that are very popular. Which ones are people really likely to book? By using a combination of Marriott’s default sorting and by picking only highly rated hotels, I think it’s reasonable to assume that many Marriott members would pick these hotels.
- Which paid rates were selected? I always picked the best refundable paid rate shown on Marriott’s website, but without applying any discounts like AAA, military, government, etc. In most cases, I selected Marriott’s “Member Rate Flexible”.
- What about point earnings on paid rates? An ideal analysis may include the value of point earnings on paid rates. For simplicity, this was not considered in this analysis. This decision has the effect of over-valuing Marriott points. See the section on Overvaluing vs. Undervaluing Points for more details.
- What about taxes and fees? For simplicity, taxes and other fees are not included in this analysis. This decision has the effect of under-valuing Marriott points. See the section on Overvaluing vs. Undervaluing Points for more details.
- Which specific dates did I use?
- Weekday: Wednesday April 27, 2022
- Weekend Day: Friday April 29, 2022.
- Holiday Weekend Day: Saturday April 16, 2022 (Easter Weekend).
Half of the results offered equal or worse point value, and the other half offered equal or worse point value.
Pick your own point value
We conservatively pick the middle value, or the 50th percentile, when we publish Reasonable Redemption Values of points.
The analysis shows that those who cherry-pick good value awards can get around 1.08 cents per point value.
RRVs are intended to be the point at which it is reasonable to get that much value or better for your points.
- New Reasonable Redemption Value for Marriott: 0.75 cents per point
- Reasonable Redemption Value for those who cherry pick awards: 1.08 cents per point
Overvaluing vs. Undervaluing Points
Many people argue that I should include taxes in the hotel rates used for analyses like this one since free night awards do not incur most taxes.
Factors that cause us to undervalue points
- We do not include hotel taxes in our analyses. Most taxes are charged on paid stays but not award stays.
- With hotel programs that offer 4th Night Free Awards (IHG, with some credit cards), or 5th Night Free Awards (Hilton & Marriott), or award discounts (Wyndham), we do not consider the point savings in our analyses.
- With hotel programs that offer free parking on award stays to top-tier elites (Hyatt), we do not factor this in.
- With hotel programs that waive resort fees on award stays (Hilton, Hyatt, Wyndham), we do not include resort fees in our analyses. Update 3/30/22: going forward, I plan to include resort fees in the analyses for these programs.
Factors that cause us to overvalue points
- We do not use discount rates (other than member rates) in our analyses. In real-life, many people book hotels cheaper (and sometimes far cheaper) by using AAA rates, government & military rates, senior rates, etc.
- We do not use hotel promotional rates. Often, individual hotels have deals such as “Stay 2 Nights, Get 1 Night Free” which can greatly reduce the cost of a stay.
- We do not use prepaid rates in our analyses. Sometimes these rates are significantly lower than refundable rates.
- We do not factor in rebates which can be earned from booking hotels through shopping portals.
- We do not factor in points earned from paid stays. These points can be thought of as a rebate on paid stays only.
- We do not factor in extra points earned on paid stays for those with elite status.
- We do not factor in hotel loyalty program promotions: Most promotions, but not all, only offer incentives for paid stays. We often see promos offering bonus points, double or triple points, free night awards, etc.
I think that including taxes in our analyses would lead to over-value points.
Conclusion
The Marriott RRV has been increased from 0.66 to 0.75 cents per point, based on the latest analysis.
This latest analysis shows that average award prices have gone down, which is good news for Marriott properties.
Links to posts like this one can be found on the list of Reasonable Redemption Values.
