In addition to redeeming Marriott Rewards points for award nights at properties, travelers can also book a Marriott Travel Package. These “travel packages†are essentially a 7-night hotel certificate and a select increment of airline miles. The variation of the packages depends on two main factors, the category of the hotel property and the amount of airline miles desired.

These packages start at 255,000 points for a 7-night category 1-4 Marriott hotel and 50,000 airline miles. The highest package at a category 8 with 100,000 airline miles is 750,000 Marriott Reward points.

A nice benefit of travel packages is the extensive list of airline partners that can be transferred to (over 40 airlines). Another thing to note is Marriott does offer a 10% bonus for airline miles if transferred to United Airlines (all other airline partner conversion bonus campaigns are excluded).

The process and restrictions for a travel package are important to understand if considering one. To order a travel package, you must call into Marriott customer support where you will be issued a 7-night certificate. When the order is placed, the airline miles transfer will be initiated, but it may take several days depending on the airline.

Once you have identified a hotel, it must have award space available for all 7 nights. If not, you may choose to stay a fewer number of nights, but those nights will be forfeited. Lastly, you have one year from the date of the travel package issue to use the 7-night certificate or it expires.

The travel packages were heavily changed with the merger of Starwood in August 2018 and the new value for travelers has severely diminished. For example, all Marriott Rewards members only pay for 4 award night when booking a 5-night stay. This makes the 7-night certificate worth 6-nights of points.

The Category-5 package with 50,000 airline miles goes for 315,000 points. A single night at a Category-5 cost 35,000 points which is 210,000 for 6 nights. That means Marriott is charging 105,000 reward points for 50,000 airline miles.

Unless you travel a lot on the road staying at hotels, but don’t earn airline miles, this isn’t a great redemption anymore. The restrictions combined with having to stay at the same hotel for 7 nights on a vacation isn’t ideal. Marriott is implementing peak and off-peak in 2019, however these certificates will have access to both. This means in the example above, the hotel stay would equal 240,000 reward points, but still cost 75,000 reward points for 50,000 airline miles.