Frequent Miler on the Air - Marriott vs. Hyatt: Which 5 free night offer is better? | Coffee Break Ep89 | 1-20-26

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

Chase is out with offers for both their Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Credit Card and Chase World of Hyatt Credit Card, both offering up to 5 free nights. So which of these offers is better?(00:32) - World of Hyatt Card(01:17) - Marriott Bonvoy Boundless® Card(01:36) - Which is better?(01:47) - Marriott advantages(05:17) - Hyatt advantages(08:10) - Caution: Annual category changes coming soon (last year it was March 25 for Hyatt, unknown for Marriott)(09:28) - Final answerVisit 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 – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Check out this month's sponsor and support our showJoin the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com/mileshttps://joinbilt.com/miles

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers 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, for your money back. Marriott v. Hyatt, which five-free night offer is better? Chase is out with offers for both their Marriott Boundless card and their World of Hyatt card. Both of them are offering up to five free nights. So it's probably not at all obvious at first blush, which offers better.

Let's get into that. Yeah, so let's look at the basic details. So the World of Hyatt credit card has a $95 annual fee, and it's out with an offer for up to five or kind of six free night certificates. You earn three Hyatt category one to four free night certificates after. $5,000 spend in the first three months. So 5K spend gets you three of the free nights. Plus, you get another two certificates after $15,000 spend in the first six months. So that's a total of five after 15K. And then, of course, the card as a standard benefit offers an additional free night certificate after $15,000 in purchases in a calendar year. Plus,

of course, you'd earn the 15,000 points on the $15,000 spent. So that's the basic gist of the World of Hyatt-Oyatt-Banvoy Boundless card also has a $95 annual fee. The offer there is significantly simpler to state anyway. It's five 50K free-night certificates after spending $3,000 on eligible purchases within the first three months. So you've got to spend $3,000 to get all five certificates on the Marriott side. Regular listeners know that we love transferable points and built has a terrific set of transfer partners. Hyatt, United Airlines, Alaska Airlines, Air Canada, Air France, and many more. You can earn Bilt points paying rent,

and at restaurants, fitness studios, pharmacies, online shopping, and more. And now, starting in February, Bilt members can earn points on mortgage payments too. Join the loyalty program for renters at joinbilt.com slash miles. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T-com slash miles. Make sure to use our URL so they know that we sent you.

So Greg the Frequent Miler, which of those offers is better. Yeah, let's dig into that question. So both of the cards are $95 annual fee cards, so you can't base it on the annual fee. Let's talk about some advantages first of the Marriott offer. So the Marriott offer requires far less spend to get five free nights. I mean, the Marriott offer only requires $3,000 spend. The Hyatt offer in order to get all the free nights requires $15,000 spend.

I mean, from that point of view, there's no comparison. Also, the estimated value of the Marriott Free Nights is higher. And what do I mean by that? We use our reasonable redemption values to estimate how much free night, to estimate how much hotel free night certificates are worth. And so what we do is we say, okay, Marriott 50K certs, they're worth up to 50,000 points, and 50,000 points are worth X. You know, we calculate that based on how much we've separately calculated points are worth.

But then we add fudge factors to decrease that value because certificates are not as valuable as points. They have limitations. They expire after one year. They can't be used like for fifth night free awards with Marriott, things like that. So after all of that, we still, our current estimate as we're recording this for Marriott 50K free night certificates is $304 each. That means you can be expected to get.

that much value or more from these free night certificates. With five of them, that means over $1,500 in potential value. The Hyatt Category 1 to 4 certificates, meanwhile, our current estimate is $216 each. So with five of those, you're looking at almost $1,100 in value, which is still very good, but not as good as the Marriott one. Or if you want to count six, because you also earn that extra free night from 15K spend, then you're up to... to about $1,300 in value, which again is a great hall, but not as good as the Marriott one. So from that point of view, Marriott's,

Marriott wins. Marriott also allows topping off the certificates with up to 15,000 points per night. So if you're trying to book a hotel that is 55,000 points for the night, you could use your certificate plus 5,000 points, and it works that way. Whereas the Hyatt one is based on categories, which categories the hotels are put in. And so as long as a hotel is in category

one, two, three, or four, you can use the free night. But if a hotel is category five, it doesn't matter what the point price is. You can't use the free night certificate in any way for that hotel. Marriott also has far, far more hotels worldwide. So, you know, the chance of finding uses for your free night certificates if you're just sort of randomly traveling around the world much, much higher with Marriott. Also, the boundless offer, there's sort of a hidden benefit to that one, which is if what you're really eyeing is the Ritz Carlton card, which is our favorite Marriott card on the market, it's one of the only ways to get the card because you can't apply for the Ritz card new, you have to start with a Chase personal Marriott card, which the boundless card qualifies,

and then after a year you can upgrade to the Ritz card. At least that's how it's worked up until now, and hopefully we'll continue to work. So that's a big advantage of the boundless card. But there are advantages to the Hyatt card too. With the Hyatt card, it's possible to earn up to seven nights with your $15,000 spend because not only are you earning the five nights from the offer and one night, which you always earn with 15K spend in a calendar year with the Hyatt card. But you'll also earn at least 15,000 points from your spend, which is good for another free night at most category one through four properties, depending on whether they're peak priced or not. Marriott card with the with the spend, even if you spent $15,000 on that card,

you would only earn 30,000 points on top of the five free nights. And so that's at most one more night. And that's not really even that. So that's advantage of Hyatt. Another advantage of the Hyatt offers that the certs work, even when hotels are peak price. So if you're eyeing a, you know, category four hotel, even during, you know, peak season, when hotels are filling up, as long as there's a standard room available, you should be able to use your free night there anyway.

Whereas with Marriott, prices are just all over the map. They're not promising any particular price. So when hotels are peak price, the one you're eyeing is very likely going to be, or it could be, not just more than the 50,000 points of your free night certificate, but it could be more than 65,000 points, which is the most you could possibly use your certificate for if you because you're allowed to tag on up to 15,000 points on top the Hyatt card is also useful for earning elite status every year you get five qualifying nights towards elite status automatically and with every $5,000 of spend you get two more

elite qualifying nights towards elite status with Hyatt and that'll help you not just earn elite status but also earn milestones along the way to status. The boundless cards It's also useful for Marriott elite status. It does give you 15 elite qualifying nights each year, but there are other ways of getting 15 elite qualifying nights that are better, or you could get more. So for example, on the Amex side, there's the Marriott Brilliant card, which will give you 25 elite nights. And they're not stackable.

Like you can't get the Amex one with 25 and the 15 from this to stack. them together. They don't stack. And most you can add on a business card and get some more nights that way. But anyway, so you can get 15 nights and then you do get one elite qualifying night from 5K spend with the Marriott card. Still, overall, I'd say that the Hyatt card is much more useful towards elite status than the Marriott card is. Regardless of which program you're looking at, I do want to caution that annual category changes are probably, coming soon. So what I mean by that is every year, usually in like late March, Hyatt will look at all their hotels in their portfolio and rejigger some of what, some of them for what category they're in. And often what we see is some of our favorite

category four properties going up to category five, and then all of a sudden they're not available for free night certificates. This also happens behind the scenes with Marriott. Marriott doesn't publish what their categories are, but they do have them. It happens at least once a year, maybe more. We don't really know because they're not transparent about it, but where hotels will get reclassified and then the point prices are higher and that that could price you out of using your free nights as well. So that's just sort of a general caution that's true of both of these offers that you might be eyeing particular property and think that by the time you get the welcome offer bonus, you'll be able to book it, but it's possible that it's possible that. that you might not be able to. Yeah, very good.

That's important to know and important to keep in mind either way, which with either of those two offers. So, okay, I've heard a lot on both sides here, but I still don't know. What's your final answer? I mean, which one is the better option if I want to open just one of these to get some hotel free night certificates? Yeah. So I don't recommend either of them if you don't know where you're planning to stay with

them, right? Like in either case, if you sign up and you don't have any plan for it, you might end up going throughout the year without using them or not using all of them. And you might have been better off with a points offer, even if the total number of stays would be less that you could do with a points offer because points they don't expire as long as you keep activity in your account. And so you know you'll use them eventually. Free nights, you might not. So I really think it comes down to this that if you have a property you're eyeing where, you know, you're like excited, like to be able to spend five or six or seven, depending on which of these offers you're looking at, nights at that property or maybe a collection of properties on different weekends, whatever it is, then both offers are really good. And then it comes down to really more like with the Hyatt offer, can you really spend $15,000 in six months? if not, then it's really only a three-night offer and not as good.

The Marriott one is kind of, you know, if you can qualify for the card, it's only $3,000 spend, five nights. That's a great deal, as long as you know that you're going to use it at a good property. So I'm going to differ just a little bit from your rationale there. I think that that makes a lot of sense and that will fit for a lot of people. I think it's important to have an idea of where you'll use the certificates, but I think it depends somewhat on your flexibility, too, because if you're somebody who's retired and you can travel whenever, you can, then maybe the five free nights from the Marriac card without a specific plan as to exactly

where you're going to use them is still okay. Now, you know, if you're somebody who's like, I'm going to take one trip this year, well, you better have a pretty good idea that these certificates are going to, you know, match that one or two trips. But if you're somebody who's like, ah, we're going to take a trip every month and we're willing to go, you know, wherever to get a great use of the certificates, then I think free night certificate offers make a lot more sense. I think they're far more valuable for people with a lot of flexibility. People that are restricted. Yeah. Yeah. They're always a big risk, I think, for people that have a restricted schedule. So given that, let's imagine that the, the spend requirement was the same for.

for five nights. So, you know, take that piece out of it. Which one would you recommend to someone who has the freedom to travel a lot and could just use them wherever and whenever? You know, I think that that's still tough to answer because the Marriott offer, I think, has the potential to be really valuable because we're valuing those certs at, you know, a figure that is reasonable and smart. But I've also seen plenty of situations where you get significantly more value, you know.

Absolutely. So there are a lot of times when you could get about a. penny a point or better from Marriott points, so to speak, so you could potentially get a stay that's over $2,000 with those certificates. So if you've got enough flexibility, I think that the cash value of that can be really high. What I like about the Hyatt certificates is somebody who is going to chase Hyatt Elite status or already has Hyatt elite status, then I think it might change the calculus some, because with Marriott, I don't know if that 50K property is going to be one of the ones where I get free breakfast or I have to choose free breakfast or it excludes something.

It's like it's kind of a pain with the whole inconsistency and elite benefits. Whereas with Hyatt, I know wherever I go, I'm going to get free breakfast because I'm using a free night certificate. I'll go free parking. I'm not going to pay a resort fee, which I would pay with Marriott. So I like those things since I have Hyatt Globalist status. And because the certificates are giftable, even if my wife got the card, she already has the card.

So she's not eligible for this. But even if she got it, she could gift those certificates to me. and we could use them under my account in order to get the globalist benefits. So I think that's a really strong benefit. And I look at it also and I say, okay, so the Hyatt card gives you five elite nights. And if you do the full 15K spend, then you're going to get six more. That's 11. And then if you use the whatever six, nine, seven nights, so we figured you could potentially

get out of the points from the spend. Now you're at 18 nights because you're going to use those within a year. So you're at 18 nights, potentially all in the same year. And you're about halfway. to the 40 nights, which is a great spot to end up in each year, at least at 40 nights in order to get a guest of honor award. So I think that it could be pretty valuable for somebody saying, oh, you know what, this will help me get towards status. It'll give me a good hotel to stay in. I think Marriott gives you far more options. So I think it depends on whether you're like, oh, there's a height I like in category

four or here's a place that there's a category for and I'd like to go there. Then I think the high it is a good fit or you're chasing status. If you're like, I don't really know where I'm in this day, but I have enough flexibility that I'm willing to get one of these offers. And I think the Marriott offer makes more sense. Yeah, I agree with that. There's also less, you know, because they're in reality, there's a lot less spend required. There's less sort of investment in it as well in order to get potentially a lot of value.

And yeah, so I agree. I agree with all that. Don't forget. If you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com.

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