Is there a way 2 prevent Marriott from deducting Reward Points at time of reservation

[GrayFal]

I plan on booking hotel reward travel in the next few weeks, probably booking each night as it becomes available for a total of 5 or 6 nights.

When I look online to do a 'test' booking, I always get this message.

"Points will be deducted for your stay.
Your e-certificate(s) will be sent to your hotel."

Is there a way online to get them to NOT deduct the points at time of reservation? I plan on using the "Book 5 nights for the cost of 4" promo and will tweak the reservation once I book my FF tickets at 330 days.
I have read that people book point reservations before they actually have the points in their account, so this must be possible.

Or do I have to call to prevent the deduction?

 

[tinman]

Marriott rewards deducting points

The only way to not have the points pulled from your account is to make your reservation by calling Marriott and asking the person not to pull the points, you cannot do this on line.

 

[jimf41]

You can't prevent MRPs from being deducted at the time of reservation. If you make a reservation and indicate that you want to use MRPs but don't have enough a note will pop up telling you you need X amount of MRPs by checkin.

If you don't accumulate the amount of MRPs needed by checkin I'm not sure what happens as I've never experienced this.

 

[NJMOM2]

I plan on booking hotel reward travel in the next few weeks, probably booking each night as it becomes available for a total of 5 or 6 nights.

When I look online to do a 'test' booking, I always get this message.

"Points will be deducted for your stay.
Your e-certificate(s) will be sent to your hotel."

Is there a way online to get them to NOT deduct the points at time of reservation? I plan on using the "Book 5 nights for the cost of 4" promo and will tweak the reservation once I book my FF tickets at 330 days.
I have read that people book point reservations before they actually have the points in their account, so this must be possible.

Or do I have to call to prevent the deduction?

Call the reservation number. I just had a 1 night reservation and using rewards points. The reservation had a note that I needed to order an e-certificate 7 days before check-in and if I didn't on then one would be ordered automatically for me.

I don't know if it can be done online that is why I called - I wanted the ability to cancel and not convert my points if I did. It was only a Category 2 reward and I knew there weren't many chances I would get to use a Category 2 reward. It was for a Spring Hill Suite reservation - very nice room I would gladly stay there again. The room slept 6 but there were only 3 of us.

 

[GrayFal]

Thanks for the info, I was not sure if I was missing something. I will call to reserve.

 

[cbdmvci]

This would probably work if you want to do it online:

Book a cancellable MRP reservation to deplete your MRP account.

Then book the reservation you want "to hold until you have enough points."

Then cancel your cancellable reservation and the points should show up back in your account.

 

[Art]

This would probably work if you want to do it online:

Book a cancellable MRP reservation to deplete your MRP account.

Then book the reservation you want "to hold until you have enough points."

Then cancel your cancellable reservation and the points should show up back in your account.

This is the easy way to do it. I did it last year when I booked a travel package and didn't have enough enough points a year out.

Art

 

[714]

Deducting MRP's from account

All that you need to do is call the Marriott Reservation toll free number and make your reservation and ask them to please not pull your points at this time. We have been doing this for a long time, approximately 7 days before the actual day of the reservation the points are deducted from our account automatically. It is very simple to do and legitmate. We prefer doing our reservations by computer, however this is an exception when we do not want our points pulled immediately.

 

[dioxide45]

This would probably work if you want to do it online:

Book a cancellable MRP reservation to deplete your MRP account.

Then book the reservation you want "to hold until you have enough points."

Then cancel your cancellable reservation and the points should show up back in your account.

This works quite well. I have done this several times when needing to book a single night where we wanted to use a yet to be received free cat 1-4 or cat 1-5 certificate. Book a reservation with points that used up most of the points in the account. Book a single night on points and tell the system that I want to wait and order the certificate later then I go back and cancel the initial big points reservation and all the points go back in to the account.

Thanks to Mr. Vker for providing this tip to me over on FlyerTalk.