Four key reasons why points are better than Marriott Free Night Certificates

Other links to products and travel providers on this website will earn Traveling For Miles a commission that helps contribute to the running of the site. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities. Terms apply to all credit card welcome offers, earning rates and benefits and some credit card benefits will require enrollment. For more details please see the disclosures found at the bottom of every page.

Over the past couple of years, when Chase and American Express have boosted the welcome bonuses on their Marriott co-branded cards, they have sometimes chosen to offer successful new applicants the chance to earn three or more Free Night Certificates instead of the more usual points bonanza.

With that trend seemingly here to stay (the latest offer on the Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card includes five free night certificates), this seems like a good time to take a closer look at Marriott’s Free Night Certificates and at why they’re are not as valuable or as useful as points.

Marriott’s Free Night Certificates

There are three primary routes by which someone may find themselves with one or more Marriott Free Night Certificates in their Bonvoy account.

1. From a credit card welcome bonus.
2. From a credit card’s benefits package.
3. Though Marriott’s Annual Choice Benefits

There are four types of Marriott Free Night Certificates (FNCs) that are offered/issued by Bonvoy co-branded cards that are still open to new applicants, and the only difference between them is their stated value:

• A certificate valid at properties charging up to 35,000 Bonvoy Points for a night.
• A certificate valid at properties charging up to 40,000 Bonvoy Points for a night.
• A certificate valid at properties charging up to 50,000 Bonvoy Points for a night.
• A certificate valid at properties charging up to 50,000 Bonvoy Points for a night.

35,000 Point Free Night Certificate*

Holders of the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® credit card and the Marriott Bonvoy Business® American Express® Card are issued a certificate valid at properties charging up to 35,000 points for an award night after they renew their card on their anniversary.

40,000 Point Free Night Certificate

One of the Annual Choice Benefits that Marriott offers guests who credit 75 elite night to their Bonvoy account in a calendar year is a Free Night Certificate valid at properties charging up to 40,000 points for an award night.

50,000 Point Free Night Certificate

Holders of the Marriott Bonvoy Bevy™ American Express® card and the Marriott Bonvoy Bountiful® Card can earn a certificate valid at properties charging up to 50,000 points for an award night after they spend $15,000 on their card in a year.

Chase and American Express have also been known to offer FNCs valid at properties charging up to 50,000 points for a night as part of a card’s welcome offer.

85,000 Point Free Night Certificate*

Holders of the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card are issued a certificate valid at properties charging up to 85,000 points for an award night after they renew their card on their anniversary.

*Other cards that are no longer to new applicants may also offer these Free Night Certificates.

Four key ways points are better than FNCs

Points in the hand are a lot more useful (and therefore more valuable) than free night certificates for four key reasons.

The expiration issue

All Marriott Free Night Certificates will expire one year after they’re issued and there’s no official route by which you can get their expiration date extended.

Marriott Bonvoy points will only expire after 24 months of continuous inactivity, and a Bonvoy member can reset the 24 month clock in a variety of ways. Some of these include:

• Earning points from a stay.
• Earning points from a credit card welcome offer.
• Earning points through a Marriott partner (e.g. Hertz).
• Buying Marriott Bonvoy Points.
• Transferring points to Marriott from a partner program (e.g. Chase Ultimate Rewards).
• Using some points for a booking.
• Transferring points to a Marriott partner (e.g. one of the many airline programs Marriott partners with).
• Transferring points to another Bonvoy member.

There are very few good reasons for someone to allow their Marriott Bonvoy Points to expire because there are so many different ways to prevent that from happening. When it comes to Free Night Certificates, however, it’s usually a case of using them or losing them.

Speaking from experience, life has an incredible way of getting in the way sometimes, and it’s amazing how quickly you can find yourself in a situation where a certificate that you feel like you only earned a couple of months ago is suddenly 6 weeks away from expiring and you don’t know what to do with it.

Yes, in this situation you’ll still have time to make sure that you use the expiring certificate, but there’s a very good chance that you’ll end up using it just because you don’t want to let it expire rather than because you have a genuinely useful purpose for it.

Bonvoy Points should never expire. Free Night Certificates will expire a year from issue.

The change issue

When you’re using Bonvoy Points to book a stay, you only ever need to use the exact number of points that the booking costs, so there’s never any wastage.

That’s not case with Marriott’s Free Night Certificates as you don’t get back in change what you don’t use.

This is less of an issue with certificates valid at properties costing up to 35,000 points/night because every year, fewer and fewer properties can be booked for under 35,000 points.

But if you have a certificate that you could use at a property costing up to 50,000 points, but the night that works best for you only costs 43,000 points …

Or 44,000 points …

Or 45,000 points …

… and you only have a certificate with which to book your night, you have to use your certificate worth up to 50,000 points and leave the change on the table.

It can feel a lot worse if you’re using a certificate that can book properties costing up to 85,000 points per night.

Despite the fact that Marriott has moved to dynamic award pricing, there are still plenty of occasions on which I see hotels that I’d like to book (i.e nice properties) charging far less than 85,000 points for a night.

Here are just a few examples:

Using a certificate that could book a property charging up to 85,000 points for any one of these nights would see the certificate holder leaving a lot of change on the table, but if they don’t have the points and only have a certificate, they have no option but to use the certificate to book.

In fact, even if they have the points to make one of these bookings, it may be foolish to use points instead of the 85k certificate.

As we’ve already established, certificates expire, so unless the certificate holder was sure that (a) they were guaranteed to be able use their 85k certificate on a future booking and (b) that they were guaranteed to get more value out of the certificate on that future booking, they would be foolish not to use the certificate right now.

Points are a flexible currency. You only use as many as you need to. Certificates are inflexible and often will not be used to their full value.

The 5th night free issue

One of the better and more usable benefits of the Marriott Bonvoy program is the benefit that gives members a 5th night free on all award bookings of 5 nights or more.

Your must stay at least five consecutive nights at the same hotel and the free night will be the night with the lowest Marriott Bonvoy Point cost during your stay.

Better still, if you book a stay of 10 nights, the two nights costing the fewest points will be free, and the 5th night fee rule continues to apply for all other stays whose length is a multiple of 5.

This benefit can be one of the best ways to get outsized value of a Bonvoy Points balance, but as soon as you add a Free Night Certificate into a booking (e.g. you use points for 4 nights and use a certificate for the 5th), the 5th night free benefit doesn’t kick in.

Per Marriott: Stay for 5, Pay for 4 Award does not apply to Cash + Points Awards, Upgrade Awards, Nightly Upgrade Awards, and Promotional Awards (e.g. issued through Co-brand Credit Card, Annual Choice Benefit, etc.

This will be an especially important thing to keep in mind when considering an application for a Bonvoy co-branded credit card that is offering 5 Free Night Certificates as its welcome bonus.

Some applicants may believe that four of those certificates can be stacked together for a 5-night stay, but they’ll be in for disappointment when they try to book. They may be even more disappointed if they don’t know that Free Night Certificates can’t be used in a ‘5th night free’ booking at all.

Using the 5th night free benefit can be a great way to get good/great value out of Bonvoy Points, but a Free Night Certificate cannot be used as part of a 5th night free booking.

The booking issue

Bonvoy points are a relatively simple currency. If a room is bookable with points and you have enough points in your account to book it, unsurprisingly, you can book it.

Logically, you would think that the same should be true for Free Night Certificates.

A certificate that is promoted as being good enough to book a night costing up to 35,000, 50,000, or 85,000 points for a night must be able to book any room costing up to 35,000, 50,000, or 85,000 points, right?

Erm … no. No, it can’t.

I’ve written about this in before (An illogical free night certificate rule Marriott Bonvoy needs to change), but it’s definitely worth going over this issue again, and the best way to illustrate the issue is with an example.

Here are some of the rooms available on a randomly chosen night at Residence Inn property in Los Angeles:

For anyone having issues viewing the image, these are the room costs:

• Studio, 1 King Bed + Sofa Bed – 52,000 points
• Studio, 2 Queen Beds + Sofa Bed – 52,000 points
• Studio, 1 King Bed, City View, High Floor + Sofa Bed – 58,000 points
• 1 Bedroom Junior Suite, 1 King Bed + Sofa Bed – 62,000 points
• 1 Bedroom Larger Suite, 1 King Bed + Sofa Bed – 64,000 points

Ok, so far there’s nothing odd or complicated here, and as I have a Free Night Certificate that’s worth up to 85,000 points in my account, I think we can all agree that logic would suggest that I should be able to book any of these rooms.

None of them costs more than 85,000 points and the most expensive option only costs 64,000 points, so there shouldn’t be an issue.

Ok. So, when I attempt to book one of the two cheapest rooms (costing 52,000 points), the booking page gives me the option to use my Free Night Certificate:

So far so good. But why book the entry level studio with a Free Night Certificate if a 1 Bedroom Larger Suite can also be booked for a lot less than the certificate is apparently worth?

In this example, the 1 Bedroom Larger Suite, 1 King Bed + Sofa Bed is pricing up at just 64,000 points which is 21,000 points less than my certificate is supposedly worth.

But look what happens when that’s the room I choose to book. The option to use my Free Night Certificate isn’t on the booking page.

All I’m offered is the option to buy more Marriott Bonvoy points so that I can I can pay 64,000 points + the rip-off destination fee for the room.

Odd, right? 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 1 Bedroom suite that I tried to book (or any of the other rooms besides the two entry-level rooms), 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 what all the Free Night Certificates that Marriott issues should say (but don’t) is that they are only valid for standard room bookings costing up to the value of the certificate.

Other rooms may be bookable for fewer points than the certificate is supposedly worth, but the certificate cannot be used to book those rooms.

In this example, if I had 64,000 points in my account I could have booked the 1 Bedroom Suite without issues. As I only have a Free Night Certificate that’s supposedly worth up to 85,000 points, I can’t.

You can use points to book any room as long as you have enough points. Free Night Certificates can only book entry level rooms even if higher level rooms are bookable for fewer points than the certificate is supposedly worth.

Bottom line

Marriott Free Night Certificates can be very useful, and if you put your mind to it and do some research, you can get good value out of them. They are, however, flawed in ways that Bonvoy Points are not, and that’s why the certificates are not worth the number of points that Marriott, Chase, and Amex suggest they are, and why Bonvoy points are the more flexible and useful of the two instruments to hold.