Marriott Rewards Lets You Book Award Stays Without Enough Points

With many hotel chains, you book award stays by paying with points already in your account. Not with Marriott Rewards! You don’t need to have enough points in your Marriott account to book an award stay. You can book an award stay online and collect the points later when convenient.

Update: As pointed out by Gary Leff below in the comments, Hyatt also allows booking of award stays before you have enough points by calling the Gold Passport customer service number at 1-800-228-3360.

This is super useful if you’re looking to book an award and want to make sure it doesn’t disappear by the time you collect your points. Or, if you want a hotel affected by the upcoming Marriott Rewards category changes in May, you can lock in the lower points rate now.

We just booked a reward stay at Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort and have until our stay in February 2014 to earn the points. Here’s how we did it…

Samba for Miles and I used United miles to book a trip to Grand Cayman next February. When we went in November 2012, we stayed at Westin Grand Cayman Seven Mile Beach. We loved the hotel and would gladly stay there again, but there’s no Saturday check-in available with points this time. So we would like to try the Marriott.

Marriott Grand Cayman Marriott Rewards — Marriott Grand Cayman: 35,000 points or $624 a night!

We don’t have enough Marriott points yet, but want to make sure we have a hotel on the island. Being President’s day weekend, there will be lots of vacationers. Hotels are also very expensive that weekend. The Marriott costs $624 a night then. That’s crazy prices! Right now, it costs 35,000 points a night. However, with the newly announced Marriott Rewards hotel category changes, the hotel will be going up to 40,000 points a night in May.

We need time to collect points and have exactly 0 points in out Marriott accounts right now! We’d also rather pay 35,000 points a night and not 40,000 points a night. We were able to ensure the following:

We reserve the 35,000 point rate at the Grand Cayman Marriott now.
We have until February 2014 to earn the 70,000 points even though the cost of the stay will go up to 80,000 points a night in May.
If we decide we don’t want to go, we have until 60 days before the stay to cancel.

When I go to book my award, I get a warning telling me I may reserve the room, but I will need to earn the points prior to check to be able to redeem the reward.

When I click Continue, on the next page, it very clearly states that my award is for 70,000 points, I can cancel up to 60 days before my stay and all I need to do is order an e-certificate once I’ve collected the points. Easy!

Marriott Rewards award stay terms — Marriott Rewards award stay confirmation

Summary

Marriott Rewards lets you book award stays without debiting the points from your account in advance.
You have until your stay to earn the points and you can cancel without penalty, depending on individual hotels.
This gives us a lot of flexibility in making award booking with Marriott and lets us lock in lower hotel point rates to offset the upcoming Marriott Rewards category changes.

Other posts you may like:

Three Ways to Get Hilton HHonors Gold Status: Free Instant Status, Fast Track Promotion and Credit Card

We just planned another trip to Grand Cayman with United miles!

How to Get Priority Club Hotels for $35 a Night: Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza on Point Breaks

4 Comments

Gary Leff says:

April 9, 2013 at 2:01 am

Hilton used to allow award stays independent from paying for the award since you could order award certificates without actual reservations. Hyatt lets Diamonds book awards without points in their account (but not online).
1. The Miles Professor says:
  
  April 9, 2013 at 2:08 am
  
  Thank you, Gary! Super useful. I updated the post to include the Hyatt info.
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