Frequent Miler on the Air - End of Year Marriott elite plans | Coffee Break Ep76 | 11-4-25

Episode Date: November 4, 2025

You have until the end of the year to earn the number of elite nights required for the elite level you're aiming for, so it's time to start thinking strategically!(00:58) - Which status levels are worth targeting?Read more about which Marriott elite benefits apply and when here.(03:23) - Shortcuts (You can read more about this here.)(05:11) - Learn more about Marriott credit card eligibility here.(08:42) - Nick's plan(12:25) - Greg's planVisit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/ to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – “Ocean Deep” by Annie Yoder

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilar's Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. On today's coffee break, we're going to be discussing our end-of-year Marriott Elite plans. If you're into Marriott Bonvoy elite status, then you need to be thinking about where you are at this point of the year. It's getting towards the end of the year. You have just until the end of the year to earn the number of elite nights required for each level of elite status.

So if you have your eyes on a particular level, you need to look at your current status, how many nights you've earned so far this year, what you have in the books like planned already to earn more. and then what is the gap? And we'll discuss what we're going to do about our own gaps in that case. And also we'll discuss some shortcuts to get there if you're not quite there. Absolutely. So let's talk first about which levels of status are worth targeting or which is worth targeting. So first of all, you've got several different levels. There's like a silver level that doesn't give you anything meaningful.

Gold status at 25 nights. So when you collect 25 elite nights, you get gold status. That gives you a 2 p.m. checkout at a lot of Marriott properties, probably not everywhere, even that it's guaranteed. But 2 p.m., most of the time for a late checkout, that's it, really, at gold, a few more points per dollar. Also, I suppose. Platinum status, you're in platinum at 50 elite nights. And at that level, that's the level where benefits start to kick in that are a bit more meaningful.

You get a 4 p.m. checkout. You get breakfast or lounge access at, again, most properties. that have a restaurant and or a lounge. Now, I say most because there are some exceptions. You don't get breakfast at Rich Carlton, for instance, though you do get breakfast at St. Regis or Weston or at least the option to choose it. We've got a post that lays out which Marriott elite benefits apply because it depends whether you're staying at a hotel or a resort, whether that's in the U.S. or abroad. So we have a whole searchable chart so you can figure out where the breakfast benefit applies and how it applies. Sometimes you have to pick it as a choice benefit. So,

status is where you get that option though anyway and again lounge access at most properties you won't get lounge access at a ritz but you will get lounge access at a weston or a marriott or a renaissance etc and you also get a 50-night choice benefit so you can choose to get for instance five additional elite nights to get you closer to titanium status if you'd like or five nightly upgrade awards which those can be used to potentially upgrade to a suite and we'll talk probably more about that a little bit later and titanium status is the next level so when you hit titanium status that'll be 75 elite nights and there you get some interesting benefits you get united in air canada elite status so sort of like the silver level status with united and something comparable with air canada aeroplane so a little bit

of status there with those and a 75 night choice benefit the probably most popular 75 night choice benefit is a free night certificate valid for a night costing up to 40,000 points. So most people will want to aim for either platinum or titanium status. There's not really much point in aiming for gold status probably. Yeah, totally agree. All right, now let's go over some shortcuts for getting to elite status. We have a post on this, and that'll have a lot more information in it called shortcuts to Marriott elite status. And so you can check that out. There will be a link to it in the show notes. The easiest way to get to free breakfast at some properties is the Bonvoy Brilliant American Express card, because that'll give you platinum status right off the bat.

I mean, it is an expensive card, but it comes with some pretty big perks. So it can be worth it from that point of view. So if you just want the simplest way to get to platinum status, that's got to be it to just get that card. it is worth noting that there are rules about whether or not you can get a welcome bonus when applying for a new Marriac card if you already have a Marriac card and those rules are more complicated even than whether or not you'll get free breakfast at a Marriott property so I just want to sort of warn you about that but but if that's if you don't care so much about the welcome bonus you're more, you know, interested in the elite status and those perks,

then you can get a card like this even if you don't get a welcome bonus from signing up. Probably worth a call out with that when Greg was mentioning. If you already have a Marriac card, there's rules about whether or not you can get another one. And this is a really unique situation that if you're new to this, you might not anticipate. But that applies across the two banks because Chase and Amex both issue Marriott cards. And so having a particular Chase Marriac card might preclude you, from getting the bonus on an Amex Marriac card. So you have to see our post with the matrix because there's literally a matrix for this.

So you can figure out whether you're eligible or not. Yeah. I'm just glad city. Like Greg said, you don't need it. I'm just glad Citibank isn't in the mix because they would probably say if you have to apply between 6 p.m. and 6 a.m. from Eastern time. Eastern time.

Right. Right. Right. But so the key is like Greg said, even if you're not eligible for the welcome bonus, you can still potentially get the card and the benefits, just not the Walthyton. bonus, but you'll have to see the post for more details on whether you're eligible. Yeah, yeah. So that's the easiest shortcut. The other thing is having Marriott cards give you a leg up on elite status because just having a consumer or a business card or both, you'll

automatically get some number of elite nights. And different cards have different amounts of elite nights that they offer. A number of the Marriott consumer cards offer 15 elite nights automatically every year. So that gives you, you know, leg up towards the 50 nights for platinum, for example. The Bonvoy Brilliant card gives you 25. So if you want the maximum you can get on the consumer side, that's 25. Now having two consumer cards doesn't give you more than that. So having like a Bonvoy Brilliant and a Bonvoy boundless card, you're not going to get 25 nights plus 15 nights because they're not additive. You just get whatever's bigger, in this case, the 25 nights. However, the consumer nights are additive with the business credit card nights. So if you have a

business card, get the Amex Bonvoy business card. That will give you 15 elite nights, and that will stack with the 15 or 25 nights from your consumer card. So you could have as many as 40 nights automatically every year. And so even if you're now, you know, looking towards the end of the year and you say, oh, I'm 15 nights short of my goal, you know, and you don't already have a business card, sign up for the business card, and that should get you the rest of the way automatically. So that's a very easy way of doing it as well. A couple more I'm going to mention quickly. The Bonvoy Boundless card from Chase will give you one elite night credit for every $5,000 spend on the card. Another thing I'll mention is, you know, Marriott has their version of

fifth night free award stays. It's not really fifth night free, but it's sort of like that. And the idea here is if you're booking a four-night award stay, consider turning into a five-night award stay. It might not cost anymore, and you could get another elite night. night out of that stay, maybe booking points for others. So in order to use your Marriott points to book a stay for somebody else, you have to call Marriott. You're allowed to do it, I think, maybe five times a year or something like that. They'll take the points out of your account and put the other person as, you know, the person on the hotel registration. I've only done this once ever, and I only did for one night's day, and it worked smoothly and everything, I was surprised

I got an elite night credit out of it. So I can't promise that happens all the time, but if it does, that might be another way you could earn some more elite nights. Very good. So let's talk about what we're going to do this year and what our plans are and our intentions. So personally, I have Marriott platinum status. That's the one that I've really valued. In fact, I ended up getting the Bonvoy Brilliant card last year because I didn't have platinum status. I hadn't qualified the year before and I needed it for a stay. I needed the breakfast and all the rest of that. So I got the Bonvoy Brilliant last year, in part because I needed it for this day, but in part also because I'm close to Lifetime Elite status, Lifetime Platinum

status. And once you hit Lifetime Platinum status and you don't really need to worry about the elite nights unless you care about the milestone benefits like the Nightly Upgrade Awards. I really don't. So this year, I'm currently at 47 nights. I'm going to finish the year at 55. I have eight more Marriette nights booked this year. And I'm confident those will all happen. So I'll end up with 55 elite nights, which will qualify me for another year of platinum status, though the Bonvoy Brilliant takes care of that, like I said before. And when the new year begins, I am going to be at enough elite nights. So when I get my 40 more elite nights when the new year begins, because I'll get 25. from having the Bonvoy Brilliant and 15 from having the Bonvoy business. Those 40 nights will get me to Lifetime Platinum status. Lifetime Platinum requires 10 years of platinum status or higher and 600 nights, and that's going to bridge the gap to get me to 600 nights. So once I get those elite nights at the beginning of 2026, I intend to write away downgrade my Bonvoy Brilliant card to the $95 Amex Bonvoy card. Now, that's a card you can't apply for new. It's the old Starwood card, old Starwood preferred

guest card. It's a $95 card that comes with an annual 35K free night certificate. It's not available for new applicants, but you can, at least my understanding is you can still downgrade from the Bonvoy Brilliant to that card. Now, the reason I'll downgrade instead of canceling is because I already paid the $650 back in August, I think. And so if I cancel in January, I won't get anything back. I'll just be out the $650 and no longer have the card. If I downgrade instead, I'll be about halfway through my membership year. So I'll get a prorated refund. I'll get half of that $650 back. So I'll get $325 back. And then I'll get charged half of the annual fee for the $95 card. So I'll get charged $47 and change. So my net cost to hold that Bonvoy Brilliant card for the year will be much less than $650.

So I'll be happy to get rid of that because I won't need it anymore. I'll have the lifetime platinum status. I do, by the way, still have Ritz cards. I have two of those. And I value the 85K free night certs. I just don't value the $650 cost of the Bonvoy brilliant enough to keep that card long term. Whether or not I'll keep the $95 bond boy card, I might because honestly, the 35K free night certs have been coming in really handy for me. So I'm actually kind of happy about the thought of having another one of those because I haven't had as many of those as I need. I find them easier wins than these super expensive cards in a lot of cases.

So I'll be happy for that, I think. I don't want to have to continue buying a $25 Starbucks reload every month in order to use the dining credit. But I will still keep probably my Ritz cards, and I won't chase any of those, like, nightly upgrade awards and things. I don't really like those very much, but the 35K certs, like I said, have been really useful for me for airport overnight hotel stays. man, hotels near JFK airport have gotten so expensive. Those 35K certs are really helpful for

nights like that or other small towns. So anyway, that's my plan and I'm sticking to it. What about you, Greg? What are you going to do? That all makes a lot of sense. In my case, I'm at about 54 nights right now. And so for me, Marriott has been losing value to me, the program, not totally because they've been raising prices they have, but because of specific situations. So, for example, I used to go every year to the Inuit Bay Harbor in northern Michigan for a little getaway, and I would use Marriott points or free night certificates to stay there. They just left the Marriott program. So that's not an option. There's no, like, nice resorts in Michigan anymore that are points bookable at least with marriott the another one that uh i've been staying at

regularly is i have family near buffalo new york and the rikert house uh in buffalo is a great hotel it's a marriott property um until recently uh the the uh points prices were always around 20 in the range of like 25,000 to 35,000 points, but the cash prices were often well over $300, $400 a night, so it was awesome value. And it made it worth the 30 minute or so drive to my family's house. Now they've bumped it up a category or two. So prices are more in the 55K range point prices. It's no longer a great value with points. I can no longer use 35K free night certificates when I want to. So I just don't see much future in that hotel.

It just doesn't make sense for me anymore. So really specific reasons why I don't see myself staying at as many Marriott nights as I have in the past. So I'm not going to try to – in past years, I've been so close to titanium, the 75-night titanium each time that I've just gone for it. maybe done a few extra nights that I wasn't planning. But this year, I'm only at 54. It's too much of a stretch to get to 75 nights to get titanium status. So for the first time in a while, I'm going to lose United Silver status and I'm going to lose the new aeroplane 25K status, which is unfortunate, but not the end of the world. And, but, you know, I did have enough nights for play. platinum, but also I have lifetime platinum status.

So I can basically give up this hunt permanently. As long as I don't care about titanium status, I could just keep my platinum forever, and that should serve me well enough. So just like Nick, I'm going to downgrade my brilliant card. I would cancel it, but again, I'm not within the range where I'd get the annual feedback. So I'll downgrade it. And I'm also planning on canceling a few. I have a lot of Marriott cards in my portfolio.

So I'm probably going to cancel a few of them to reduce how many free nights each year. I have to figure out how to use. Yeah, you know, and that's a different problem for me because I've been short of the free nights that I would like to have free night certificates with Marriott. I have not had any trouble using lots of those. So I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum of that, but I'm on the same wavelength in terms of not really caring about chase. status. I have a question for you, which of the 50-night choice benefits are you going to pick because you're going to be over 50 here? So which one is going to be your pick this year? I'll pick the not Sweet Night Awards. What are they called? Nightly Upgrade Awards.

Nightly Upgrade Awards. I've had decent luck with them. I don't use them often, but for a one, two, three-night stay, I've often had some luck getting upgraded to a nice sweet. And so it can have good value. The most recent experience was the St. Regis in Chicago. If you get upgraded to a suite there, you get a personal butler who, like, will bring you coffee and does various things for you that you don't get if you're in a regular room. And so the suite, the nightly upgrade award had a lot of value to me there for a, I can't remember it was a two or three nights day.

So, yeah, how about you? yeah well i i i'm probably going to take the nightly upgrade awards too i can't see any of the others being particularly interesting and without going for titanium it doesn't make any sense to take the five nights of elite credit i don't need those in order to hit lifetime status so i think if you're chasing lifetime status it can make sense to take the five even if you're not going after titanium but in my situation i don't need that my frustration with the there's tons of things to be frustrated about with the nightly upgrade awards but my particular frustration in 2025 is that i made reservation about a year in advance for a stay that's coming up soon here where I have those

nightly upgrade awards attached and probably they're not going to clear and and when they don't I'm going to have like a month and a half to use them because they'll get them back but I'm going to have very little time to apply them to anything else and not very much in terms of Marriott stays in that window so they really annoy me but that's the best of the bunch of great They're very awkward in so many ways because they don't start to clear until five nights before your actual stay, and there's no guarantee that they'll clear at all. Also, like, if you take the five upgrade nights and you have a six-night stay booked, you can't apply them. You have to book a five-night stay and one-night stay in order to be able to use them. So it's just, there's a lot of issues with those things.

But same time, I don't know that I've ever used like all five necessarily, but I feel like when I have used them, I've gotten enough value that it was like, yeah, this was a good pick. I don't disagree. There's been a few times in the past we've gotten terrific upgrades with them also. So they can be great. It's just you can't count on much from them. But you can count on us to not chase too many more elite nights in the future, but to keep our platinum status. thanks to playing the game. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list,

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