A little over a week ago we let you know that the fun and luxurious BISHA Hotel in Toronto had joined Marriott Bonvoy as a Luxury Collection hotel (Thank you to the RWRDS Canada community for the alert!). However, at that time you could not book the hotel online just yet but now you can and you can use your Marriott Bonvoy points here with pretty good value!
You can even use your Free Night Award from the Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express®* Card or the Marriott Bonvoy™ Business American Express® Card with a points top off on some nights in the off seasons.
Here’s an example of a points stay on March 14:
This night requires 45,000 points for the free night award and the equivalent cash cost is C$658 including all taxes and fees (FYI the CAA rate is the same as this). This example provides 1.46 cents per point in value which is significantly higher than our 1 cent per point valuation for Marriott Bonvoy.
The number represents some big returns for spending on either of your Marriott Bonvoy credit cards or Membership Rewards cards like the Cobalt Card. For example, the Cobalt Card’s 5x points convert to 6 Bonvoy points and with the current 30% transfer bonus you would end up with 7.8 Bonvoy points per dollar spent. Multiply the 7.8 points by 1.46 cents per point in value and you have an 11.39% return on your card spending. What’s not to love about that!
You could also use your Free Night Award from the Marriott Bonvoy credit cards on some of those nights. The 45,000 point example above would require a 10,000 point top off as the FNA will cover the first 35,000 points. To get $658 room night for an FNA and 10,000 points represents some pretty amazing value.
Seeing redemption opportunities like this just further solidifies why it makes sense to have one of the Marriott Bonvoy credit cards in your wallet:
Are a lot of us going to go out and spend $600+ on a hotel night? Not really, well yes, really some of us would (The RWRDS Canada family has on many of occasions) but for a lot of Canadians that’s not financially feasible.
So that’s where something like the welcome bonus on the Marriott Bonvoy card(s) comes to the forefront. For someone who would never be able to splurge for a night out at The BISHA, it is entirely possible to do so thanks to the Marriott Bonvoy™ American Express®* Card’s welcome bonus. It has a super easy requirement of only spending $1,500 on the card in the first three months to receive the 50,000 point welcome bonus. With that spending it means you’ll actually end up with no less than 53,000 points which is more than enough to book a free night here and all you’ve had to pay is your $120 annual fee on the card (add $1,500 more in spend and you have enough points for an award night on New Year’s Eve!)
