Limited time: Earn up to 1,200 bonus Marriott points with Eat Around Town, existing members included

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.

Any opportunity to earn bonus Marriott points is welcome news. And Marriott’s current Eat Around Town promotion lets you earn up to 1,200 bonus points for purchases you’d likely make anyway.

Eat Around Town is a dining rewards program that gives Marriott Bonvoy loyalty members the ability to earn bonus points whenever they dine at a participating U.S. restaurant (of which there are more than 12,000). Just sign up, link a card to the program and you’ll get extra Marriott points whenever you use that card at a participating restaurant.

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This promotion only lasts through June 30. Here’s what you need to know.

Marriott Eat Around Town promotion rewards you for dining

Marriott’s newest promotion doles out bonus points based on the number of times you visit a participating restaurant. You’ll earn:

• 200 bonus points for your first visit.
• 400 bonus points for your second visit.
• 600 bonus points for your third visit.

That’s a total of 1,200 bonus points. TPG valuations peg the value of Marriott points at 0.84 cents each, making this promotion worth $10.08 in travel.

However, if you know how to maximize Marriott points, you can get significantly more value. For example, I recently used my Marriott points for a stay at The St. Regis Maldives Vommuli Resort, where I received a value of 3 cents each for my points. If you were to make a similarly strategic redemption, those 1,200 points could be worth $36 or more in travel.

Here are a few important details about this promotion:

• You must be enrolled in the Marriott Bonvoy program.
• You cannot earn more than 1,200 bonus points from this promotion.
• You must spend at least $30 each time you dine to trigger the bonus (including taxes and tip).
• You can only earn one bonus per day.
• Orders placed through a third party, online ordering site or delivery service do not qualify.

If you manage to spend exactly $30 per visit, you’ll have spent $90 for 1,200 points. That’s over 13 bonus points per dollar.

One thing to note is that you must pay for your meal with the card you’ve linked to the Marriott Eat Around Town program. You will earn credit card rewards in addition to the promotional bonus points. So if you’re using a Marriott credit card like the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card, you’ll earn an additional 3 points per dollar on dining.

You might consider a card that earns transferable points and gets a bonus on dining purchases. For example, the American Express® Gold Card earns 4 American Express Membership Rewards points per dollar spent on dining worldwide. You can transfer these points to a variety of airline and hotel loyalty programs, including Marriott Bonvoy.

Related: 10 of the most generous airline and hotel dining rewards programs

Bottom line

If you think you’ll eat out three times by June 30, you can pick up an easy 1,200 Marriott points by enrolling in Marriott’s latest Eat Around Town promotion. More than 12,000 restaurants participate — but your favorite restaurants may not qualify, so you might be forced to try something new.

A bonus 1,200 points might not sound like a lot, but if you pounce on low-hanging fruit like this with regularity, you’ll build your points stash in no time.