New Marriott and SPG 2018 Promotions

Both Marriott and SPG have announced promotions for Q2 of 2018. These aren’t especially attractive offers given the bonus rates but they are still worth registering for in case you’ll be benefiting from the promotions. Here are the details of the new promotions:

Marriott MegaBonus

• Earn 750 points per night on every stay, starting with your third night.
• Register by June 30, 2018 for stays from April 16, 2018 to July 20, 2018.
• Promotion capped at 36,000 Marriott points.
• You can register here.

SPG More Nights, More Starpoints

• Earn 250 points per night on every stay, starting with your third night.
• Register by June 30, 2018 for stays from April 16, 2018 to July 20, 2018.
• Promotion capped  at 12,000 SPG points
• You can register here.
• Some SPG properties are not eligible for this promotion

As the merger of Marriott and SPG becomes closer to being finalized it seems that the promotions for these two programs are becoming more aligned. In this case the promotions are virtually identical. SPG points can be converted to Marriott points at a 1:3 ratio and Marriott points can be converted to SPG points at a ratio of 3:1 so these promotions are identical (aside from SPG having exclusions).

Are these good promotions?

I don’t think these bonuses are very lucrative.

750 Marriott points per night is like getting $6 back. Other promotions in the past have offered more substantial returns. For example, the last Marriott promotion (ending April 15th) awarded 2000 bonus points per stay starting with your second stay plus 1000 additional points for stays that included a weekend night. So starting with your second stay, you could earn up to 3,000 points even on one-night stays. In that case it was easy to net a $24 return with only a one night stay.

With this promotion you’ll earn points on nights rather than stays. For example, after you hit your third night, a four night stay would only net you 3,000 points while before you could break that up into four stays and earn substantially more points per stay/night.

Final word on the Marriott and SPG 2018 promotions

I like to think about how these promotions can work in conjunction with status challenges since you can often mitigate the cost of status challenges if you play the promotions right. In this case, I think this new promotion is one of the less valuable promotions in terms of value potential for mitigating the cost of a status challenge.