Marriott Promo Rundown: MegaMiles, MegaBonus and Fairfield Inn 7,500

June 04, 2012

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6 min read

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Marriott has several promotions going right now, so I thought I’d take a quick look at them and how you can stack them to maximize your Marriott Rewards points.

Megabonus: Three Free Nights Summer Promo
First, as reported in the Summer Hotels Promo Roundup a couple weeks ago, the Marriott Three Free Nights summer promo started June 1, and runs through August 31.

(Note: they specialize offers for each member, so what you have in your Marriott.com account may vary depending on your past stays and your elite status.)

The summer promo amounts to buy 2 get 1 free.

Marriott Rewards members can earn up to three free nights with the Marriott Rewards Summer Bonus promo. To earn the free nights, you must register by June 30, 2012. Then when you stay twice at any participating hotel between June 1 and August 31, you earn one free night certificate after every second paid stay, up to three free nights at a Category 1-4 property to be used within one year after the date of issuance.

Offer valid at participating hotels within the following participating brands, including JW Marriott, EDITION, Autograph Collection, Renaissance Hotels, AC Hotels by Marriott, Marriott Hotels & Resorts, Courtyard by Marriott, Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott, SpringHill Suites by Marriott, Residence Inn by Marriott, TownePlace Suites by Marriott and Marriott Vacation Club, as well as Ritz-Carlton.

As I said before, this promo is a bit underwhelming, but thinking strategically, if you had some hotel stays coming up anyway, you could suck it up and spend six nights in various Category 1 properties like TownePlace Suites in Denver, where rooms are about $100 a night, then you could turn around and get three free nights in a Category 4 property like JW Marriott Beijing, where rooms start at around $250. So you’ve spent $600 (hopefully that you were going to anyway), and you’ve gotten $750 worth of value in exchange. This will definitely take some flexibility on your part though.

Megamiles
MegaMiles will run from July 1 – October 31, 2012. The basic gist of it is that you will earn triple miles on stays after your second stay. If you’re already Marriott Rewards member, you will need to change your earning option from points to miles and select a participating airline partner before you register via the promo page. If you’re not yet a Marriott Rewards member, you can both join the program and register for the promo through the landing page and select your airline partner during the process.

The MegaMiles promo will run July 31-October 1.

Members will earn triple miles beginning with their third stay at any participating Marriott hotel. To earn the triple miles, you must register, then stay at any participating property between July 1 – October 31, 2012. Here are the terms and conditions on earning miles with partner airlines. Award stays do not count.

List of participating airlines:

Aeroflot
Air Berlin
Air Canada (Aeroplan)
Air China
Air France/KLM
Alaska Airlines
Alitalia
ANA
Asiana
Avianca-TACA
Avios
British Airways
Cathay Pacific
China Eastern
China Southern
Delta
Frontier
Gol/Varig
Hawaiian
Japan Airlines
Jet Airways
JetBlue
Kingfisher Airlines
LAN
Lufthansa
Qatar
Singapore Airlines
Southwest
TAP Portugal
United Airlines
US Airways
Virgin America
Virgin Atlantic

Be sure to check the full list of airline partners and the earning ratios.

To find out the full details of how many base miles you earn with each participating airline on Marriott stays, check out Marriott Rewards’ airline partner page here. On all the airline partners except JetBlue, Southwest and Virgin America, you earn 2 miles per $1 spent at JW Marriott, Autograph Collection, Renaissance, Marriott and Marriott Vacation Club as well as on room rates at Ritz-Carlton and Edition, and just 1 mile per $1 spent at Courtyard, AC, Fairfield Inn & Suites, SpringHill Suites, Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites and Marriott Executive apartments. So it would be 6 miles and 3 miles respectively with this promo. Because the points you earn are based on spending, it might be hard to pull a huge amount of value out of this promotion, however, considering the value you can find in spend category bonuses of 2x, 3x and 5x points for everyday spending like dining and travel on other cards, 6 miles per $1 spend is nothing to ignore.

For JetBlue and Virgin America, you normally earn just 1 point per $1 spent at the top-shelf brands, and 1 point per $2 spent at the others, so your points will triple based on that equation. While for Southwest, you earn 600 points per stay normally at any of the brands no matter the length, so it will be 1,800 with this promotion. This could be a great way to stock up on Southwest points at the cheaper properties. There are some Qantas quirks as well, so check out the information on the airline page for individual information on that program.

Unfortunately these first two promos are not stackable since if you have your profile set to earn miles, you won’t be eligible for the free nights for the Summer Promo. However, do your Summer Promo stays first and get them out of the way to earn some free nights, and then switch your profile to earn miles and register for the Megamiles promotion. If you don’t have too many stays coming up and have to choose between the promos I'd probably opt for the free nights since I have more airline miles than hotel points.

The Fairfield Suites promo was targeted, but can't hurt to try registering!

Fairfield Inn & Suites 7,500-Point Bonus
Finally, there is a promotion specific to Fairfield Inn & Suites that has been running since May 1 through July 31. When you make 2 or more stays at any of Fairfield’s nearly 700 properties, you earn a 7,500-point bonus. You must register for the bonus through Marriott Rewards’ website or by calling 866-921-3957 and book a stay anytime now through July 31. Is it a huge amount of points? No, but it’s enough for another free night at a Category 1 property, or a PointSavers night at a Category 2 property. Best of all, however, it’s stackable with the Summer Promo of 3 free nights. Note: this promotion seems to have been targeted and sent out to select Marriott Rewards members via email, but it can’t hurt to try registering via the promo page.

A Possible Stackable Scenario
Though the Megamiles bonus isn’t stackable with either the Three Free Nights or the Fairfield Inn & Suites bonus promotions, the latter two are indeed stackable.

None of these will make me switch my loyalty to Marriott, but they are no brainers for the Marriott folks who have stays planned anyway.

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