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But that's not what I really want to talk about. I'd prefer to discuss why after all these years of been a Marriott Rewards/Bonvoy member, it still seems like Marriott has no idea what will engage me and what will not.
Marriott Bonvoy appears to be sending out emails to select Bonvoy members offering them a chance to earn some bonus points on their future stays. I received my email yesterday and have been targeted to earn a potential 36,000 bonus points.
But that’s not what I really want to talk about. I’d prefer to discuss why after all these years of been a Marriott Rewards/Bonvoy member, it still seems like Marriott has no idea what will engage me and what will not.
My targeted offer
My offer comes with a headline that reads “Earn up to 36,000 bonus points after 12 eligible paid stays“, and these are the headline terms:
- Register today.
- Stay at any of our hotels and resorts worldwide participating in Marriott Bonvoy now through 02/28/2026.
- Get 12,000 bonus points after four stays, 12,000 additional points after eight stays, and 12,000 more points after 12 stays.
Interestingly, the email that I received alerting me to this promotion says that “registration must occur within three weeks of receiving this email. Eligible stays must occur within 3 months of the registration date“, so if I didn’t register until the last possible moment (8 December 2025), that should/may give me until the end of the first week in March rather than the end of February to earn as many points as possible.
Doesn’t Marriott know me?
I often wonder how Marriott’s algorithm comes up with these promotions because based on my travels in 2025, it should be abundantly clear that this isn’t a promotion with which I’m likely to engage.
As I type this, I have 19 nights credited to my Bonvoy account this year and 15 of those have come courtesy of my Ritz-Carlton credit card. That means that I’ve spent just 4 nights at Marriott properties in the past 10.5 months, so what makes Marriott think that I’ll be interested in making 12 paid stays in the next three?
And what in my recent history makes Marriott think that 36,000 points may be enough to entice me to make three times as many stays in the next three months as I’ve made in the whole of 2025 so far?
At TFM, we value Bonvoy points at just 0.6 cents each (based on the value we know we can get out of them with relative ease) so, essentially, Marriott is offering me an effective rebate of $72 for every four stays I make in the next three months (capped at 12 stays).
Even if I made sure that all 12 stays were 1-night stays, the total effective rebate ($216) is still not going to be a big enough to cover the cost of even one of those nights, so I couldn’t be less interested in this offer.
And this is what I don’t understand:
I’ve been a Marriott Rewards/Marriott Bonvoy member for most of this century (I have Lifetime Titanium Elite status), so Marriott has more than enough data on me to give it a good understanding of what motivates me and what does not (I’ve participated in and opted out of dozens of promotions in the past 20+ years), and it should easily be able to see how the number of nights I’ve spent at Marriott properties has declined precipitously in the past few years.
So why is it offering me a promotion the data must surely show I won’t care about?
I thought all of these big hotel corporations were meant to be harvesting every bit of data on every one of their customers and examining that data in minute detail so that they can predict what we like, what we don’t like, and how we’ll behave under different scenarios?
Well, if Marriott is harvesting my data, it’s doing a truly terrible job of using it to any kind of effect!
I genuinely don’t understand this because the offer I’ve been sent isn’t a generalised, open to all, global promotion. This is, apparently, a targeted promotion that, presumably, is meant to entice me to give Marriott more money than I have already spent at its properties this year (which is just $399!)
But what sort of algorithm thinks “ah ha! This guy has spent just 4 nights with us in the past 10+ months, so an offer of 36,000 points in return for 12 more paid nights over the next three months should tempt him in”?
It’s laughable 🙂
Still, maybe I should look a this from a more positive point of view? Maybe I’ve done a far better job of keeping all my data private from Marriott than I thought? Or perhaps all the stories we read about how every bit of information about us is being collected and analysed are completely over-blown?
Or, perhaps the real issue here is that the people running the data mining part of Marriott Bonvoy are incompetent.
My money is on the latter 🙂
Have you been targeted for a new Bonvoy promotion? If you have, is it in any way tempting? Or is it as uninteresting as my one?
Related: Marriott Bonvoy Isn’t Really Encouraging Lifetime Elites To Be Loyal
love your perspective on the use of data and it also highlights what is typically more real than not—do they really know you as a traveler. of course with nearly 248M members, there’s likely more not known than actually known. but look on the upside—this offer will certainly be perfect for some members.
Exactly incompetent!!!
Back in the day, by which I mean a decade ago, pre-merger, Marriott’s 3x yearly “megabonus” promos offered generous bonuses. My travel at the time as either weekly stays or sometimes extended stays 30+ days. Invariably, though, while some people got targeted for bonuses based on number of nights, I’d always get one based on number of stays. Either they didn’t know me, or were trying to get me to change my travel patterns (rather than just get more of my existing business from other chains).
But the key difference then, was that if you were a 50+ night elite, they would let you call in and change to a bonus of your choice. I probably racked up 300K bonus points over a few years from that. Ah, the good old days.
Does Marriott have IT? Their digital keys never work, or have to be activated at the front desk. Hilton and Hyatt work seamlessly. When I call Bonvoy, it asks if I’m my wife. Titanium “support” can’t fix easy things like associating my name with my phone number. After numerous emails and phone calls, their phone system does not recognize my wife (Platinum on her own) and thinks I am her. Marriott emailed me an e-gift card for my birthday but no one at the hotel could figure out how to use it. It took a fourth call and a supervisor from Titanium support before it worked.