Planning on a WDW trip in October 2022. Thinking of applying for a Marriot credit card to use the rewards at the Swan or Dolphin. I plan to pay it off each month. There is a deal out there now for 125,000 bonus points if you spend $5,000 in the first three months plus you get a free night. It has an annual fee of $95. Is it worth it? Is this a good offer from Marriott?
If your one and only goal is to stay at the Swolphin next year, then you’ll want to get a feel for points needed during your ideal stay. How many nights are you planning? This is helpful to know for you to devise your strategy. Marriott has a benefit for all points bookings “Stay for 5, Pay for 4: Receive a complimentary night when you redeem for five consecutive nights.” This only works if you are using points to book all the nights in the reservation. It doesn’t work to combine free night certificates (FNCs) and points.
Marriott has peak, standard, and off-peak pricing. Peak and off-peak can change monthly. The standard award rate for any of the hotels (Swan, Swan Reserve, or Dolphin) is a Category 6 which is 50,000 points per night. Off-peak for Cat 6 is 40k points and peak pricing is 60k points. So you’ll want to play with some dates to see where the award rates fall. This is just a guideline for determining how many points and/or FNCs you’ll need to cover your trip. Also note that even on award stays Marriott does not waive resort fees. All the Swolphin hotels have a $35 per night resort fee that will be charged daily.
All this said, unless it’s a very short trip (or a split stay) I suspect you may need more than one sign up bonus to complete your stay. For a 5 night stay it would be anywhere from 160,000 to 240,000 points, with utilizing to 5th night free benefit. If you got very lucky and found at least 3 off-peak nights to combine with 2 standard or off-peak nights to use 50k FNC’s, then you could make one bonus cover a 5 night stay.
There are 4 Marriott cards available at the moment from two issuers – Chase and Amex - but due to Marriott restrictions on earning bonuses, you can realistically only get 2 for the bonus at a time per person. If you have a P2 (aka Player 2. A spouse, travel partner?) willing to get cards then you can pickup more points.
From now until Nov 3, here are all the public sign up bonuses available –
AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Business: 125,000 Bonvoy points +
2 FNCs valid for
up to 50k points per night after spending $5,000 in 3 months. This has an annual fee (AF) of
$125, not waived for the first year. (Future benefits, it receives a 35k FNC after your anniversary, but you need to pay the next year’s AF to get it. Basically paying $125 for a Marriott night.)
AmEx Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant: 150,000 Bonvoy points +
1 FNC valid for
up to 85k points per night after spending $5,000 in 3 months. This has an annual fee of
$450, not waived the first year.
To take some of the sting out of the annual fee, the card includes a $300 Marriott credit. Since the Swolphins have the resort fee you’d be paying anyway, that can offset the annual fee. If you may spend $300 cash at any Marriott during your card year anyway, whether you had the card or not, I would consider it even with the hefty fee. This also grants Gold status at Marriott, plus being a premium card there’s some other outside perks to it. (Future benefits, it receives a 50k FNC after your anniversary, after paying the next year’s AF)
Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless: 125,000 Bonvoy points +
1 FNC valid for
up to 50k points per night after spending $5,000 in 3 months. This has an annual fee of
$95, not waived for the first year. (Future benefits, a 35k FNC after anniversary.)
Chase Marriott Bonvoy Bold: 60,000 Bonvoy points after spending $2,000 in 3 months. This card has no annual fee. (Future benefits, none)
Just looking at the AmEx cards it seems like if you time it right you could potentially get 4 nights out of each card. The Chase Boundless should get you 3 nights. Honestly, the Bold is not even worth considering. I put it out there because it exists, and everyone should know it exits, but that’s really about it. The bonus is blah, the points for spend is blah, because it’s free it doesn’t get an anniversary FNC,
AND, the biggest reason of all, if you have the Bold you can’t apply for the Boundless (and vice versa). Chase will only let you hold one at a time.
Now, as I mentioned before, Marriott has put a labyrinth of restrictions on who and when you can receive bonuses from these cards. They didn’t want people double dipping between the two card issuers, so getting a card from Chase can lock you out of a bonus from AmEx and vice versa. There are also card issuer rules to follow between the two. AmEx generally has a “lifetime” bonus restriction, meaning there’s language in the offer terms that state if you ever had this card before you are not eligible for the bonus on it. (Even if you never received a bonus on it, just holding the card makes you ineligible to receive a bonus.) Chase is more lenient on the bonus rules, they’ll let you get another bonus after 24 months, but they have a 5/24 rule. If you’ve opened 5 (or more) cards in the last 24 months, as reported on your credit report, they’ll just deny you the card itself.
Because of all the restrictions, a general recommendation for those new to the Marriott cards is to just start with AmEx. Once you get the AmEx card(s) you get locked out of Chase for 24+ months and vice versa. But, as AmEx allows you to get both the Business and Personal card bonuses, starting with 2 is generally better than 1. Since it’s “once in a lifetime” you’ll want to make sure you’re getting a very good offer, if possible, an “all time high” offer. The current offers available until Nov 3 are pretty good and may be all time highs (subjectively), but more importantly, they seem like they would help out with this particular goal better than Chase. I would look into the AmEx side more. The big caveat with AmEx – and this goes for all their cards – is to also make sure whatever you would be completing the spend with takes AmEx! Not everyone does and there have been dreams dashed when finding out that the orthodontist is a Visa only office, or the tax office, oil/utility dealer, restaurants, etc doesn’t accept AmEx. There are ways to work around it somewhat, but better to plan beforehand than to panic after.
For each card you are interested in, check out the “offer details” and it’ll explain more about the eligibility for each card/bonus. If that’s too much text, if you search for “marriott credit card chart” you should get a couple visual guides that might possibly help (I know FM and TPG have ones that should pop up.) But also,
check out each card in relation to how it will help with your goal. An offer is only as good as what it can accomplish
FOR YOU. Most of these offers are subjective. For someone that Chase Boundless 125k + 50k FNC is perfect and worth it. For another it would be wholly inadequate and “wastes” a 5/24 slot.
While comparing the points prices, also compare the cash prices. Probably not in this case, but sometimes getting a card that's more flexible cash wise is the better play than a hotel card. I add up all the AF's needed for the necessary hotel points and then see what the best comparable cash price is. For a crazy example, say I have to pay a $95 AF + 50k points per night for a room with a cash price of $250 per night. I might look into a card with the same $95 fee that has an equivalent bonus of $800 to cover the same 3 nights I could get with the hotel card, since that card may be more useful long term. (Maybe, possibly, won't know until I research)
I’m sure I’m missing something but hopefully this helps get you started!
Just a waiting game at this point. Everything can be canceled, though I might need to pay a redeposit fee on the Avios.
Now I need to see if I can get a retention offer on the CSR, or if I downgrade it next month. I' okay with my choice to churn the IHG again, and then opt for the CIC#2 vs MDD. 
