I’m always interested in hotel promotions. For starters, it costs nothing to sign up for them and if a hotel chain is going to offer bonus points, I’m going to take them. On a more intellectual level, I think hotel promotions can give an insight into which customers a hotel is trying to convince to stay at their properties. They also can show which customers a chain really doesn’t care much about.
To use some current examples, Hilton’s current promotion awards double points for every stay and triple points if you pay with a Hilton co-brand AMEX card. They just want more people to stay at their hotels and hopefully for some people to sign up for their credit cards.
IHG’s current promotion doesn’t pay off for a single stay and only starts to get valuable after your third or fourth and subsequent stays.
So what about Marriott Bonvoy’s promotion?
The Unlock More promotion was launched on October 29, 2019, and runs until January 14, 2020.
The promotion starts very straightforward. There no award for your first stay. The first award starts with your second stay.
Stay twice to earn 2,000 bonus points.
Since all Marriott Bonvoy members earn 10X points per dollar spent on stays, unless you’re staying at hotels that cost less than $100 a night, this initial bonus isn’t even worth double points.
But what happens once you stay twice at Marriott Bonvoy properties?
Two to three days after your second qualifying stay has been posted, You’ll automatically unlock an additional offer with Unlock More. Your additional offer will appear in your online member account and you’ll receive an email with offer details.
It’s a mystery. You have to stay twice just to find out what your offer will be for additional stays.
Fortunately, sites like Loyalty Lobby have leaked the additional offers for this promotion.
There are many offers available varying from 2,000 points for 2 additional stays to an additional 20,000 points for one additional stay. Honestly, this harkens back to the IHG Accelerate bonuses where the bonus was tied to your account history. Unfortunately, I do not have two hotel stays to waste at a Marriott Bonvoy property to see what offer they are willing to give me.
If you want to sign up for the promotion, here is the landing page.
Final Thoughts
I guess it depends on your situation on how much this promotion appeals to you. If you don’t stay often at hotels, having to stay twice at a Marriott Bonvoy property just to see what offer you’re going to get isn’t that appealing. If you stay at hotels all the time, this might be an offer for you.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
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