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I recently booked a stay at the London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square and leaving aside the fact that I wasn’t particularly impressed with the property (reviewed here), there was something else about the booking that stood out for me – Marriott as has an illogical (some may say ridiculous) rule when it comes to booking rooms with a Free Night Certificate.
The free night certificate that I used to book the 1-night stay came from my Ritz-Carlton™ credit card (which is currently not open to new applicants … although this may change) and is the same type of certificate that holders of the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card are awarded every year.
When being discussed generally, most people usually describe this as a certificate which can be used to make a 1-night reservation at a property charging up to 85,000 Bonvoy points for that night.
Technically, however, that’s not true. And it’s not true for a ridiculous reason.
Let’s take a look at my attempt to book the London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square with the 85k Free Night Certificate.
This is what I saw on the pricing page when I searched for availability at the hotel:
Keeping in mind that at the time of the booking I held a certificate “valid for a one-night stay at a property with a redemption level up to 85,000 points” …
… logic would suggest that I should be able to book any of the rooms listed on the screenshot above.
- Deluxe Room, Guest room, 1 Queen – 60,800 points
- Deluxe Room, Guest room, 2 Twins – 76,000 points
- Deluxe Room, Guest room, 1 King – 76,000 points
- Superior Room, Guest room, 1 King, Grosvenor Square view – 70,800 points
All these options clearly cost less than the 85,000 points that the certificate is supposedly worth, so there shouldn’t be an issue. Right?
No. That’s not right at all … as I was quickly reminded.
When attempting to book the ‘Deluxe Room, Guest room, 1 Queen’ or the ‘Deluxe Room, Guest room, 1 King’, the option to use my certificate was front and center.
Marriott’s booking engine makes it very easy to use a Bonvoy Free Night Certificate for a single night stay.
When, however, I attempted to book the ‘Superior Room, Guest room, 1 King, Grosvenor Square view’, this is what I saw.
There was no option to use the Free Night Certificate, and keep in mind that this was a room priced at 70,800 points.
That’s not only considerably less than what my certificate was supposedly worth, but it was also 5,200 points cheaper than the Deluxe Guest Room that I was able to book.
So what’s going on?
Well, even though the free night award information page makes no mention of this, there’s a hidden limitation to these certificates.
Rooms that are deemed to be ‘premium rooms’ cannot be booked with a Free Night Certificate regardless of the points cost of the room.
If you take a closer look at the booking page for the Superior Room, you can see that the word ‘upgrade’ is used in the description of the booking …
… and on this Marriott ‘help’ page dealing with Free Night Certificates, it says that “a Free Night Award cannot be used for an Upgrade Award”.
So that’s that.
The room may cost less than the 85,000 points my certificate is supposedly worth, but that doesn’t really matter because per the certificate’s (very) small print, it can’t be used for this booking.
Bottom line
Some readers may be surprised to learn that an 85k Marriott Free Night Award can’t actually be used to book any room costing up to 85,000 points. It can only be used to book standard rooms costing 85,000 points or less.
If other rooms are also available for 85,000 points or less, you won’t be able to use the 85k Free Night Certificate to book them and to my mind, that’s more than a little ridiculous. Marriott really needs to change this.
I’ve also experienced this. Why aren’t point just points? Just seems like another way to limit certificate use.
They like to encourage as much ‘breakage’ as possible.
That is ridiculous. A certificate that plainly says a free night award of a room up to 85,000 points… but then is something completely different.
If the terms aren’t clear on the offer page, and it’s only on a help page that isn’t directly referenced as part of the terms, then there’s a reasonable chance of someone making a lawsuit out of this at some point if they don’t make the restriction clearer or change it to allow those rooms. You’re right, they should change it
I agree and I’m surprised Marriott hasn’t been in trouble over this already.
This is standard for Hilton too.
That’s true, you can only book standard rooms with Hilton’s certificates, but Hilton doesn’t put a value those so that doesn’t seem particularly underhand. Marriott’s rule seems a little bit more egregious given that its certificates give the impression that any room costing up to the value of the certificate can be booked.
On top of that, it’s worth noting that Hilton’s certificates allow a guest to book any standard room regardless of points cost while none of Marriott’s certificates can book a standard room (without a points top-up) if the cost/night is over 85,000 points.
Bonvoy’d!
Hi Ziggy, Learning from your wrote up about redeeming Marriott certificate. I have just started with Marriott and have 1 free nite certificate to use. Does one have to pay any additional fee or resort fee or destination fee when using the certificate or points to book an award nite stay with Marriott? Thank you!
Hi Kay
Unfortunately, the answer to your question is “possibly”. Marriott doesn’t charge fees to redeem a FNC, but if your chosen property charges destination/resort fees, those will still have to be paid.
Only Hilton and Hyatt (out of the big 4) waive resort/destination fees on award stays.