Marriott Bonvoy has launched a new benefit allowing members to top up their Free Night Award certificates with extra points.
Members can now add up to 15,000 points to each Free Night Award (for use against standard room types only), and where several certificates are being used to redeem against a multi-night award stay, members can top up each certificate.
Free Night Awards are earned through Marriott Bonvoy partner programmes including co-branded credit cards, or as an Annual Choice Benefit for elite members, and they carry specific points values.
Previously members holding, for example, a Free Night Award worth 30,000 points, would not be able to redeem the certificate against properties priced at a higher redemption rate than this. The new benefit should give members more flexibility in the use of the certificates going forward.
The addition of Free Night Award Top Offs were announced in October last year as part of a raft of changes to the Marriott Bonvoy programme, but only went live at the end of April.
The programme also adopted flexible point redemption rates at the end of March, with Marriott stating that “rates will move more closely in line with (not exactly with) hotel rates and availability, giving Marriott Bonvoy Members even more options to choose from than the current off-peak, standard, and peak rates”.
And last month The Ritz-Carlton Reserve brand joined the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty programme, enabling members to earn and redeem across the five Ritz-Carlton Reserve properties worldwide.
For our recent interview with Anthony Capuano, CEO of Marriott International – in which he discusses hotel recovery, possible future acquisitions and the end of the Marriott Bonvoy Rewards table, see:
