re: Marriott Rewards Card "could" be the best travel card out there

quote:

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Go to flyertalk.com and get them to find the possible holes.

If this works...then I need to re-read what you wrote and figure it out...right now.

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A coworker of mine turned me on to the 270k thing through flyertalk and I lurk there quite regularly. I know this is really suited for a place like that, but I lurk here a lot and see the credit card question pop up quite regularly, so thought I might share.

Here is the Marriott link to look at the points/flight thing:

LINK

This does show I was mistaken and to get 120k at Aruba, you need 330k, so I will go back and adjust my calculations from that. That makes it 16.5k for a platinum member at a Marriott to spend, still a relatively low number, and that includes no additional spending. However, you could settle for 50k airline miles for 280k and if you are really a frequent traveler, you probably have other miles lying around anyways, so you make the 280k with the original calculations.

You basically decide what hotel you want. You can go to a Category 5 and below with 120k airline miles for 270k points.

As for my claim on the United Airlines thing...just take a look for yourself. 120k gets me to freaking Malaysia from my home airport if I catch a super saver fare.

To put the tiers in perspective, the new JW Marriott in Dubai is only a Tier 6, and it is the tallest hotel only structure in the world. Plus in Dubai, bigger is absolutely better... The Ritz there is a tier 3.

The calculations for the other cards is simple. At 2% cash back for travel, you get .02 cents per dollar spent. I actually did the Chase Sapphire some injustice b/c you get a 20% increase in value if you book through them, but it is still not even close to the Marriott system.

The rest, 5 points per dollar at Marriotts is on the credit card's website, and the 50% bonus is also on the Marriott elite website.

Here is a little trick I found on flyer talk...

Change the 50 to a 70 in the URL and get 70k bonus points for signing up...

LINK


There really aren't holes in it as far as blackout, etc... more like restrictions, as in, your vacations WILL be at a Marriott property. It's all legit and using the programs Marriott offers within their limitations. You are just getting hotel points rather than CC points.

Also, as further proof, my coworker is sitting on 400k Marriott points and has already called to confirm that he can use this offer to go to Spain.