I was doing my normal bonus point updates and adding new offers to our Marriott Rewards Bonus Opportunities page and came across this offer for the Courtyard Detroit Pontiac/Bloomfield. It is promoted on Marriott’s site as 6,000 Bonus Marriott Rewards Points per night however when you click through to check availability, the room and rate selection page also has a 10,000 points per night offer. I decided to check how much more this rate is then the regular best available rates. The dates I checked were July 15-17 and the 10,000 point rate was $129 per night versus $79 for the advance non-refundable rate or $89 for the best available rate.
Now usually I don’t like bonus offers that charge more then the best available rate but many hotel loyalty programs offer these type of bonuses for an extra fee (IHG’s Bonus Point packages to name a one) and are general referred to as the “Screw your Employer rate” as most people who book them are not paying for the room but are collecting the points, so why not get extra points while you are at it.
In this case, it may be worth it to pay the extra amount if you need to stay at this hotel or in this area. Lets take a 4 night example, you would earn 40,000 Bonus Rewards Points at a cost of $200 (the extra $50 per night). What can that 40,000 bonus points get you? A stay at a category 8 hotel such as the Paris Marriott Hotel Champs-Elysee which usually runs well over EUR300 per night. Split this into 2 stays and you can also take advantage of the Marriott MegaBonus summer offer of earning a free night after completing 2 stays. Not a bad deal at all.
As a comparison, if your travels do not take you to Pontiac then you can buy the points from Marriott for roughly the same amount as a 4 night stay at this location.
For more details on this offer see here.
