Once again excellent
news coming out from Marriott today – they are providing further
extensions to free night awards and points expiration! These changes
will be effective as of May 6, 2021:
Free Night Award (FNA):
Members who currently have a Free Night Award (FNA) that had an
original expiration date in 2020, or which will expire before January 2, 2022, as part of their Cobrand Credit Card Benefit, Annual Choice Benefit, promotions or travel package will be able to redeem it through January 3, 2022. Please note that FNAs with an original expiration date before 2020 will not be eligible for the additional extension. Members do not need to take any action because the system will automatically update their account with these extensions on May 6, 2021.Points Expiration: Points expiration won’t resume until March 31, 2022. This will give members whose accounts have been inactive for at least 24 months even more time for a points transaction to keep their account active and to redeem points in their account toward a stay so they have more time to use them for free nights, gift cards and more. At that time, your points will only expire if your account has been inactive for at least 24 months.
Early on during the onset of the
pandemic Marriott announced they will
extend free night awards which were due to expire in 2020 to January 31,
2021 and then further extended it to August 1, 2021. Today’s news will see those awards being extended an extra five
months. This is very welcome news for those members who have not
undertaken travel yet and most likely weren’t going to travel by the end
of July. I see this as a good move by Marriott – not only to look
good in the eyes of its members but to potentially increase the
likelihood of having members return to Marriott instead of other chains
thereby increasing potential revenue. That is, having members redeem
free nights may add to their revenue in hopes those members may be
booking longer stays using the free night and paying for other nights as
well as those members eating and drinking on site thereby increasing
the revenue stream on the F&B side. Hotels have struggled here in
Canada with occupancy rates at record lows for over a year now and worldwide
the numbers weren’t much better except for in the U.S. right now so the chains are doing anything possible
to grow those numbers and these extensions are just one example of
that.
We have two Free Night Awards that were set to expire in September 2020 which were extended to August 1, 2021 and should
now be extended to that January 3, 2022 date.
Our Free Night Awards include those provided as an anniversary bonus
from the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card.
Marriott
also realizes those members who haven’t stayed with them due to the
pandemic shouldn’t be losing their points balances either so we see the
company extend that pausing of points expiry from the previous date of August 1, 2021 to March 31 of 2022 now!