I’ve had the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card for years. It’s no longer open to new applicants, but I’ve kept it around because it gives me a 35K Free Night Certificate each year for a $95 annual fee. That perk alone makes the card worth keeping.
So imagine my surprise when American Express decided to hit me with not one, but two separate upgrade offers at the exact same time.
The Upgrade Offers I Received
- Bonvoy Brilliant® ($650 AF)
- Earn 85,000 points after $6,000 spend in 6 months.
- Bonvoy Bevy® ($250 AF)
- Earn 75,000 points after $5,000 spend in 6 months.
Both offers run through September 2025.
The Public Offers for New Applicants
For comparison, the public offers available today are much richer:
- Bonvoy Brilliant® ($650 AF) — 185,000 points after $6,000 spend.
- Bonvoy Bevy® ($250 AF) — 155,000 points after $5,000 spend.
Clearly, my upgrade bonuses are much smaller than what new applicants can get.
Why Upgrading Can Still Make Sense
Even with weaker numbers, upgrades aren’t worthless. In fact, they can be a smart move because:
- Marriott + AMEX eligibility rules are messy. You may not even qualify for new card bonuses depending on what you already hold. Frequent Miler has a great explainer here.
- No credit pull. Upgrading doesn’t show up on your credit report.
- Avoids new account restrictions. Chase and others can deny you if you’ve opened too many new cards; upgrades don’t count the same way.
Why I’d Lean Toward the Brilliant
If I were to take one of these offers, it would be the Bonvoy Brilliant.
Yes, it has a $650 annual fee — but there are ways to recapture much of that cost using the “AMEX coupon book” strategy of stacking credits and benefits. I wrote about that here.
The Brilliant would also give me:
- Marriott Platinum Elite status back.
- An 85K Free Night Certificate every year.
- And combined with my wife’s’s Ritz-Carlton card, we’d have two 85K certificates annually to use on higher-end properties.
That’s real value if we use them strategically.
The catch? The bonus itself. 85,000 points for $6,000 in spend isn’t a great way to meet a spending threshold. There are other cards where that same spend could return much more.
Final Thought
For now, I’ll keep my legacy Bonvoy AMEX because the 35K free night for $95 is unbeatable. But I can see the case for upgrading to the Brilliant at some point, especially if we want to double up on 85K certificates.
Would I upgrade right now, on this offer? Probably not. The bonus isn’t strong enough to justify shifting $6K of spend. But if AMEX comes back with a better upgrade deal — or if I need Platinum status back — I might give it more thought.
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