If you happen to follow any U.S. points & miles blogs you may have seen this new redemption option making waves across so many of those sites! From what we can tell this news was broke by Mile Value and it is simply awesome! That news is that the new Le Meridien Maldives that will be opening this September is only a Category 5 hotel in the Marriott Bonvoy program. That's right! A Category 5 hotel when pretty much all their other hotels in that region are Category 8! So what does that mean? Read on to find out!
We are used to Marriott Hotels in the Maldives being Category 8 hotels which means on average you are looking 80,000 Bonvoy Points per night for an award at these hotels. It can go higher and lower but even at the 80,000 point level the redemptions were considered gems as the value per point is simply amazing (Read this just as an example of the amazing value of a Category 8 Maldives redemption) so when the new Le Meridien Maldives was revealed as a Category 5 hotel it's like whoa hold on a second! Category 5 hotels only price out at 35,000 points as a standard redemption and 30,000 for Off Peak and 40,000 for Peak. Right away if you have knowledge of the Marriott program and also the Marriott credit cards you'll see that the annual free night certificate from the Marriott Bonvoy American Express Card and/or the Marriott Bonvoy Business American Express card can be used at this location since those certs are good for award nights of up to 35,000 points!
Here are two examples of 5 night stays at this new hotel for two people:
As you can see you can stay for as little as 125,000 points for 5 nights by taking advantage of the 5th night free option from the Marriott Bonvoy program. This puts you at 25,000 points per night! Because there is so much coverage of this awesome new hotel redemption, availability is being swallowed up fast! Some other blogs have reported 5 night stays for as little as 120,000 points or 24,000 points per night - I have not been able to find any of those anymore and find very few stays for the 125,000 points amount. Most are pricing at 140,000 points now.
You'll see that just like most hotels and resorts in the Maldives you have to book your seaplane or boat transfers which in this case for this hotel is US$420 per person.
It also appears they only have stays in 2021 open for award redemptions right now as they don't show any availability for 2022 just yet. I'm guessing this is all part of seeing how the resort is received as a Category 5 and we may actually see it shift to a higher category in 2022.
Learn more about and book the Le Meridien Maldives here.
Images courtesy of Marriott
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