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Marriott Bonvoy® has made an improvement to its free night award redemption feature that allows members to add more points when using their certificates. As of today (March 12th), members can now top off free night certificates with up to 25,000 additional points per night. Previously, the program allowed members to add a maximum of 15,000 points to supplement a certificate.
The change represents a 67% increase in the number of points members can add to their free night awards. The feature was first introduced in early 2022 to provide additional flexibility when redeeming certificates that are capped at specific point levels. For example, a certificate valid for a hotel costing up to 50,000 points can now be combined with up to 25,000 additional points to book a room priced at up to 75,000 points per night. The top-off feature applies to all types of Marriott free night certificates, including those issued through co-branded credit cards, promotional offers and elite program benefits such as Choice Benefits. Certificates generally come with a fixed redemption value of 35,000, 50,000, or 85,000 points. Members can add points to each certificate during the booking process (including when using multiple certificates for multi-night stays).
Marriott says members can still apply nightly upgrade awards to reservations that use topped-off free night certificates. However, travelers should note that modifying a reservation may change the number of points required for the stay. This depends on the property’s pricing at the time of the adjustment.
While the increased top-off limit provides greater flexibility, the adjustment may still lag behind the rising number of points required for some Marriott properties. Since Marriott moved to dynamic pricing, some high-end hotels within the program can now cost more than 200,000 points per night during peak periods. Even with the new 25,000-point top-off option, many certificates remain far below the redemption levels required for those properties.
Hotel loyalty programs vary widely in how they handle free night award flexibility. For example, Hilton Honors offers free night rewards without category caps. This allows them to be redeemed at nearly any participating property. IHG One Rewards lets members add an unlimited number of points to top off free night certificates. Meanwhile, World of Hyatt® currently does not allow members to supplement free night awards with additional points. This is a big miss on Hyatt’s part (in my opinion).
Anthony’s Take: Despite the limitations and award cost inflation, Marriott’s expanded top-off feature provides members with more flexibility than before when redeeming their certificates. This is especially at properties that slightly exceed a certificate’s original points cap (looking at you St. Regis Bal Harbour and your many 103,000-point nights).
(Image Credit: Marriott.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
