All cards that earn Membership Rewards First or Membership Rewards
Select points are eligible for this offer and those cards are as
follows:
- American Express Cobalt™ Card
- American Express® Gold Rewards Card
- The Platinum Card®
- Choice Card from American Express
- American Express Business Edge™ Card
- American Express® Business Gold Rewards Card
- Business Platinum Card® from American Express
This is a transfer bonus that many people American Express cardholders anxiously await for so they can convert their points as it represents a decent value proposition. We value Marriott Rewards points around 1 cent each (in C$) so in effect you are getting 1.56 cents per Membership Rewards points converted. Now you might be saying well 1.56 cents for every dollar I spent isn't that great and when making that direct comparison it isn't - but that's an absolute minimum. You can easily pull value of over 3 cents per point with the Marriott Bonvoy program. Then you have to consider the points multipliers on the various Amex cards. For example, if all your Membership Rewards Select points earned on the American Express Cobalt Card were from the 5x eats and drinks category, you are in fact getting 7.5 Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar spent or a 7.8% return! That's a good return and something to really consider especially given the fact that you can pull even more value out of Marriott Bonvoy than 1 cent per point. Those higher values are typically achieved when you take into account Marriott Bonvoy's benefit of redeeming points for a five night stay and only paying for four nights. Again looking at 5 points per dollar earning and getting 3 cents per Marriott Bonvoy point back you are looking at a return of 23.4%. That's talking about value! And since you can't convert Membership Rewards Select points to airlines directly this conversion to Marriott is king for the Cobalt and Choice cards.
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| We transferred Membership Rewards Select points earned on the Cobalt Card to Marriott - that's without the bonus showing yet! It will be over a million Bonvoy points once all is said and done |
Plus just over the past few days we had Amex reveal their accelerated earn offers for eats & drinks on select cards including 10x points for the Platinum Card. Those points have already started to post so if I converted just those points where I have earned me 11 to 13 points per dollar multiplied by 1.56 I would get a 17.16 to 20.28% return! In my case I'm not converting as the points on my Platinum card are earmarked for Aeroplan and British Airways but that's just an example of what you can achieve combining various Amex promotions!
Remember though that's only taking into account accelerated points earning per dollar spending. Once you take into account non Eats and Drinks spend or the earn levels on the other cards the value drops but not to a point where it should be ignored. It really depends on how, when and where you as an individual want to be rewarded. For example the 1 to 3 Membership Rewards First points earned per dollar spent on The Platinum Card may be better off being converted to Aeroplan or British Airways as you can potentially pull more value out of those conversions.
Ultimately look at the big picture of when, where, how and who you think you might travel with in the future. I've said for the better part of my 20 years of doing this that for some Canadians, hotel programs can make better sense for a family than a frequent flyer program. Think about it - how much money would you have to spend to get four business class tickets for a family versus how much money you need to spend to get one luxurious hotel room? The latter in many cases will take less and then ask yourself this question that I have also posed for many years: do you want 7-10 hours or luxury or 7 days of luxury? I know which I'd pick. Granted some of us our lucky in that we can potentially do both for our families but for most Canadians it will be one or the other. That being said f you are single traveller or perhaps only two of you it is a bit more of grey area as to where to park your points and which bonuses to take advantage of. Do you convert your Membership Rewards points to Marriott right now for this bonus or wait and convert if and when they run a bonus to British Airways Executive Club (for those with the Platinum or Gold cards)? These are all questions you need to ask yourself before you convert. And then you have one more thing to take into consideration and that's the ability to convert Marriott Bonvoy points to over 40 different airline loyalty programs - much more than the six currently available through Membership Rewards. So much to take into consideration!
Note that it can take up to 8 weeks after your initial transfer for the bonus to show up in your Marriott Bonvoy account.
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