Vacation Package using Marriott reward points

[nygiants11991]

I was told by a salesman, that you can get packages for X amount of Marriott points that includes your airfare and lodging. Can someone please explain to me how this works.

 

[dioxide45]

A search of this forum will provide you with many hours of reading material.

 

[nygiants11991]

A search of this forum will provide you with many hours of reading material.

How do I search the forum?

 

[lll1929]

Basically you purchase a travel package and you receive one week of travel and a certain # of airline miles.

ex: I purchase a category 6 hotel and 120 thousand airline miles using 250 thousand marriott points. That gets me 1 week of housing at any cat 6 hotel and free airline tickets (up to 120,000 miles). I chose American airlines and purchased 4 RT tickets to Aruba using my 120,000 airline miles.

 

[winger]

I am currently in Oahu.

The rep is referring to a Marriott Rewards air/hotel travel package. I am surprised he did not show you how this works...or were you just not paying attention???

http://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/morepack.mi

Earlier this year, I 'purchased' an air/hotel travel package from Marriott Rewards for 200k MRP's. This gave me 70k ff miles, which is good for two r/t airfares to/from SFO to HNL (I happened to ask Marriott to transfer/deposit these 70k ff into my American Airlines ff acct. This package includes a 7-night category 6 hotel stay certificate, which I booked at the Waikiki Marriott.

 

[taffy19]

Do you enjoy the location of this hotel? We did and had a beautiful view because we upgraded. It was worth it to us. Here was our view.

We mostly stay here because it is cheaper and the view is identical. We don't mind staying in a hotel room rather than a suite so long we have the view. We don't want to cook when we are on vacation unless we have company.

 

[winger]

Do you enjoy the location of this hotel? ....

In my example, I neglected to point out I was using this Waikiki Marriott room as 'backup' for my 2nd week in Oahu, my first week being an exchange at Marriott's Ko Olina Beach Club (as I am writing this, I am on the last couple of days of the first week's stay ). I subsequently found a 2nd week at the Beach Club, which I will start this coming Sunday (couple of days from now). Once I found the 2nd week at the Beach Club, I cancelled my Waikiki Marriott stay next week and am using that hotel certificate at a southern Calif coast Marriott for the Jul 4th week next year (2008) to supplement my one week,end of June stay at Newport Coast Villas.

 

[nygiants11991]

I am currently in Oahu.

The rep is referring to a Marriott Rewards air/hotel travel package. I am surprised he did not show you how this works...or were you just not paying attention???




Winger, I was paying attention and NO the rep did not explain exactly how the rewards points worked. They just gave examples of X amount of points could get you this. They did not tell me for X amount of points I could stay in a particular hotel category and then I would be given miles to an airline.



So this brings another question, what is the best airline, points wise, to fly out of Sacramento? Is there a person you can call to make these reservations or is it done online?

 

[Dave M]

So this brings another question, what is the best airline, points wise, to fly out of Sacramento? Is there a person you can call to make these reservations or is it done online?

There is no single best answer to your question.

The "best" airline is probably the one where you can find award seats. That won't be easy if you are going to a popular vacation place such as Hawaii or if you will be flying during peak vacation periods, such as during summer or other periods when schools are out. And it will also require that you start trying to make reservations as early as possible. For most airlines, you can make reservations for a flight 330 or 331 days before you plan to fly. United will be one fairly good choice from Sacramento.

Why start so far ahead? Most airlines allocate very few - sometimes as few as two - seats on a flight during popular vacation periods and to popular vacation destinations. Thus, there will be a lot of competition for those few seats.

There used to be a service where for a nominal annual fee, someone would help you arrange free travel using your Frequent flyer miles. That service no longer exists. Thus, you have two choices. Learn about how to do it by studying and practicing online with the airline(s) of your choice or try to find a knowledgeable travel agent who will do it for you for a fee of (likely) several hundred dollars. Ultimately, if you do it yourself, you can make reservations either online or via phone with the airline.

 

[Cathyb]

My sister lives in Sacramento and sometimes flies to Hawaii out of Oakland to take advantage of her frequent flier miles if none is available in Sac. We always use American out of LAX and so far have always been able to get ff seats (we call exactly 330 days out) for our June/July timeshare in Maui.

An additional note: If you order the 085 Package (air, hotel, car) you can turn back the hotel portion and get 50K Marriott Reward Points put back into your account if you find you aren't going to need the hotel. We used the Kauai hotel as a backup until our II request was confirmed.

 

[pwrshift]

I think best air+hotel pkgs are the Cat6 or Cat7 087 or 091 pgs with 120k FF miles costing 250k or 270k MR points. Those are traditionally Marriotts best hotels and most expensive. You best maximize the FF miles portion as the miles can be used anytime as long as you keep your airline account 'active' by buying flowers for your spouse every few months. The FF miles are icing and make the cake taste much better. The Cat6 pkg is marginally a better deal.

You have to pre plan you trip ... and estmate any problems you might have marrying up the air dates with hotel dates. It requires a little work. Marriott messed up the reservation system recently by immediately taking your MR points if you reserve the hotel on points ... so if the chosen airline doesn't have seats you might have to get point credits and adjustments ... someone at MR wasn't thinking when they made that automatic change. It's best done on the phone now, not online, which I'm sure wasn't what Marriott wanted.

If you book 330 days ahead of leaving you probably won't have problems getting seats and rooms when you want them, but you'll still need a little flexibility as some hotels (Rome Flora) march to a different drum. After that short window it can get complicated. Make sure your chosen airline has good 'partners' so you have more flexibility in flights. UA partners with Air Canada, Lufthansa, and a bunch more in the Star Alliance, AA partners with different airlines, etc.

For any flights over 3 hours I fly business class ... it's a premium of about 50% more FF miles, but if you were paying cash it's sometimes 5x as much as economy...so there's great exchange in value comparing miles vs cash (check Expedia). And business class seats to Europe are very spacious compared to domestic business class seats. AA will hold seats but has more 'partner' use restrictions than UA.

Choose your airline well ... UA for instance won't hold seats for you if you don't have points in their plan to cover what you want, which means you may have to get Marriott to rush (extra fee) FF miles to them before you can confirm anything.

The best Europe plan, IMO is to cash in two Cat7 pgs for 540k MR points ... and send 240,000 FF miles to your chosen airline. Now you have more than enough for two business class flights anywhere in Europe with a stopover at no extra ... so you stay a week in Paris then fly to Rome for a week and then home. Those hotels are probably 500 euros a night if paying cash...and you pay tax on checkout when you don't with points (except for items charged to rooms).

You can buy 50,000 MR points each year to have enough ... so buying in Dec and Jan means 100k more points if you need need them. Same with the airline plans.

I personally like to earn points for hotel stays and not use points for them unless I buy the air+hotel pkgs ... then you have the best of both worlds and you earn more Elite status by getting some 'hotel stays'. Sometimes you can compare the room cost vs the points cost to see IF it is worth using points ... based on a cost of $0.0125 per MR point. If it takes as many points to stay one night in a $80 a night hotel as it does in a $400 a night hotel you can calculate the better deal easily for value of pts vs cash.

Lots to learn. The MR program been a great bonus for our family, just don't waste them.

Brian

 

[Dave M]

Adding to my earlier post, see this thread for some assistance on how to go about making reservations for a travel package.

 

[MULTIZ321]

NYGiants11991,

In answer to your question on how to do a Tug Search - Toward the top of the Tug BBS Forum page - you will see a blue toolbar with a number of hyperlinks, one of which is "Search". Click on the "Search" hyperlink and put in your key words.

Happy Searching.


Richard