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Marriott Bonvoy points expire after 24 months without qualifying activity.
What Activities Keep a Marriott Bonvoy Account Active?
The following activities are considered a qualifying activity and will keep your account active.
- Make a paid (or redemption) stay at any participating hotels worldwide
- Redeem points
- Use your Marriott co-brand card for purchases at least every 24 months
- Earn points with a program partner
- Purchase points
- Hold a qualifying meeting or event, including earning points through the Rewarding Events Program
- Convert points to airline miles or airline miles to points
What Activities Do Not Keep a Marriott Bonvoy Account Active?
Conversely, these activities are not considered a qualifying activity and will not keep your Marriott Bonvoy account active:
- Gifting or transferring points
- Receiving points as a gift or transfer
- Earning points through social media programs/promotions, such as #MRPoints
- Registering for a promotion
- Marriott Vacation Club owners staying during their ownership stay, even if earning Elite credit
Fortunately, like other hotel programs, there are many ways to keep a Marriott Bonvoy account active that require very little cost, time, or effort.
Full details on point expiration can be found at Marriott.com (section 1.6.d.).
The comments on this page are not provided, reviewed, or otherwise approved by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.
Made a purchase through Marriott’s shopping portal just the other day to keep my points alive!
Thanks, I didn’t know that Marriott have a shopping portal I must check it out.
I don’t stay that often in Marriott and have had points expire, but luckily only a couple of thousand. When I do stay in Marriott now I usually select airline miles instead as I’m more likely to use them and they have a longer expiry date.
I really appreciate your listing of the ways to keep points alive.
What happens if I cancel a reservation I made using points, and the expiry date of my account is somewhere in between the reservation date and the cancellation date?
Does it result in expiry of points?
I don’t think this is a possible scenario as points expire 24 months after no activity, redemption is considered an activity, and you cannot make reservations with Marriott more than a year in advance.
Howie, do you know the required minimum marriott rewards before they will transfer to aadvantage points?
10,000 Marriott Rewards to 2,000 AAdvantage Miles (http://www.marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/morerew.mi)
What about the transfer of points from SPG?
If I’m not wrong this doesn’t delay the expiration but in the other way it does.
Can you confirm?
Correct. It appears to be a “bug” for our benefit. Where SPG activity is generated but it doesn’t count with Marriott for expiration extension.
So we can just transfer back and forth to keep points alive? since they don’t lose any value when transferring.
A transfer from SPG to Marriott appears to extend the life of SPG. However, Marriott to SPG doesn’t appear to extend the life of Marriott.
Expiry of Marriott points is not affected by transfers to/from SPG. It is not a qualifying activity. Several people have briefly lost their points when doing transfers from SPG into an inactive account.
I’ve used the point purchase before to keep these active. For 12.50 for 1k points, its an easy and cheap way to do it.
Luckily, some of the twitter promos qualify for activity.
Looks like I need to be following them on twitter
Transfer from SPG was marked as a qualifying activity for me. And some of the #MRPoints activity too.
I have elected to have the Marriott Rewards credit card to keep my points active and to receive a free night once a year.
Big fan of Marriott points. Especially because they could be transferred to SPG now so its really valuable. I actually just burned my entire Marriott balance on an 8 day trip to Europe.
Thanks for this – a good reminder! Just to be clear, transferring SPG to Marriott does not count as activity for these purposes?
Based on what has been seen, transferring from SPG seems to be a qualifying activity with SPG — e.g. showing activity which is what is required to keep an SPG account active, however it does not extend the life of a Marriott account. I think this may purely be a tech glitch/limitation as the intent is clearly not to do this.
Can I have both the regular Marriott card AND the business card at the same time? I have had the non-business one for years not but I’m thinking of applying for the business one as well for the 80K bonus and to keep personal and business travel separate.
Thanks!
C
Absolutely. Yes you can have both.
That’s a great way to do it. I also opt for airline miles. I don’t stay in hotels much so would take a long time to accumulate points for a stay.
Twitter and Instagram as well!
Honestly 24 months is a gift for expiration. Most program points expire in 12-24 months.
Marriott run regular FB & twitter point promos so I use this route to extend the life of the balance.
Thanks for the reminder that gifting points doesn’t count.
Thank you for the reminder. It’s always nice to be reminded when things expire! Sometimes my mind is not always registering all the different dates and to do items I have. I love that Marriott has so many ways to be able to extend the life of my points. Plus, 24 mons?! That’s sweet! So many companies have 12mons or 18 mons. Wish they all wouldn’t have an expiration, but well I understand why.
Have a question though…do a lot of people have credit cards for their different awards programs? I would have a horribly full wallet if I did that.
I would think yes — the key though isn’t earning points/miles in programs directly, but rather to give you flexibility by earning points that allow you to transfer to multiple different programs: Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points and SPG Points are the best ones out there.
Seems like if you keep using the SPG Amex for example, they don’t expire because every month you earn them.
Don’t forget Gold status on United will give you Gold Marriott status (executive lounge access)
I assume buying a coffee at one of their shops and adding your Marriott number would qualify even if you’re not staying with them? I know it works for Hyatt, but not sure if Marriott lets you do this. If so, it’s probably yet another way of keeping points alive.
No, not currently. SPG does, but as of now Marriott does not.
Good to know. We just got the Chase Marriott Rewards card- so, we’re getting in the game with these points! I really appreciated the comments too. Thanks to all who posted.
What constitute a qualifying activity?
Please read the post. 😉
Thanks for information. I have Marriott points but never used.
Marriott has been an okay program for me. Let’s help there are more improvements with the SPG merger.
Thanks for the post. I didn’t know it’s got expiration. I love Marriott because one can get lounge access as a gold member even if I reserve their cheapest room .
I got to know my earned Marriott points was expired after 10 days since it was expired. I know that I had to remember it and had to use the points in advance. But actually I was naturally expecting Maririott to send notification e-mail(s) earlier than expiry.
Discussing with Marriott, Marriott also explicitly mentioned that “MarriottRewards send notice by e-mail to all members at 90,60 and 30 days prior to the expiration date displayed on member’s account”. But what I had received were just e-mail for booking cancel and some advertisement from SPF without the notification e-mails. How only the expiry related e-mails can be missing selectively?
I asked to provide the 3 e-mails which they had sent to me. But long story short, they are just provides the following description from http://www.marriott.com/rewards/terms/default.mi not showing the proof for the notification e-mails.
>> 5. The company … have the right to change, limit, modify or cancel the Rewards Program Rules, Rewards and level at any time, with or without notice, even though such changes may affect the value of Points or Miles …
As Marriott explicitly mentioned to send the notification e-mails and others using “AND” condition, I think it is Marriott’s duty to send the expiry related e-mails for the expiry to be effected. But Marriott has been repeating that expired points can’t be reinstated with above reason.
I don’t think I’m wrong here but I’d like to hear how other people think of this. personally I see their answer is contradiction and I belive they didn’t send the e-mails.
So just to be clear, with the combined program, assuming one has now combined their points, if one had recently, e.g., August 10, received SPG points by a transfer from another SPG member or a transfer from their own Marriott account, that recent activity in SPG, done under the SPG rules for what counts as points activity, becomes your most recent activity for purposes of the combined Marriott program going forward (but of course after this, the Marriott rules apply to the expiration of points). This is important to folks with no qualifying stays. Thanks.
Hey there! Just to get it correct: If i book a room with my Points…and cancel it a day later – will i get my Points back AND my expiration date reset?
Thanks, is an urgent question, my points are about to expire in 3 days…
As I understand the rules, no. You actually have to complete the stay. I’d buy the points to guarantee extension.
Can you confirm that Amex SPG spend will extend my Marriott point expiration? My AwardWallet desktop shows my Marriott points expiring in 9 months even though the balance goes up from Amex spending. I’ve reached out to Marriott a couple times about this, but haven’t heard back.
Yes, this will extend it. Please reach out to support awardwallet.com/contact if you’re seeing a bug with how expiration is being reported.
Award wallet is showing my Marriott points expiring in January. I have both SPG cards. I have not combined my accounts yet. Am I correct, that if I don’t combine the accounts then, these points will expire or spending on my SPG cards enough though accounts not combined?
Pat, please reach out to support directly at https://awardwallet.com/contact with questions about your account. Unfortunately, I can’t see what may/may not be going on in your account. As for combining your accounts, I see no reason to hold off doing that.
I purchased 1,000 Marriott Points for $12.50 but it did not extend the expiration. Did they change this? Thanks
Not according to the terms. I would suggest reaching out to Marriott if you’re seeing an inconsistency.
Same thing is happening to me. I’m going to try and reach out to Marriott
Hi dear, can I know did you get your points extended by puchasing points? How do you get your issue resolved?
Mine is expiring in Feb2020😖
I spoke to the manager of our local Hyatt hotel. She says that drinks and food in the bar will earn points irrespective of if you are resident at the hotel. I’m going to Happy Hour in the bar to find out.
Hey, just wondering if this worked? My points expire in March and I don’t have any hotel stays booked.
Is this still accurate ?
Yes, post is up to date.
Does transferring points from Hertz to Marriott extend the life of the Marriott points?
It ‘should’ as you are converting points from a partner to Marriott points, but the language in the T&Cs specifically mentions converting miles to points or points to miles as a way of preventing your miles expiring, not converting points to points. It’s worth noting that transfers can take up to 8 weeks. If you do transfer, please let us know if it resets your expiry and I’ll get the post updated.
I have successfully transferred 600 Hertz points to 1000 Marriott points and the transfer has reset my Marriott points expiry.
Thanks to the Award Wallet blog, I have been able to clear out some old accounts (Hertz, Hyatt, Hilton) with a handful of points and updated the expiry dates of accounts that I want to keep.
I transferred 1,000 UR points and I was able to stay active
If I purchase Bonvoy points but have my preference set to miles, am I purchasing miles or points? If they are miles, do they reset the expiry date of my Bonvoy points or do I need to switch my preference back to points for this purchase in order to reset the points expiry date?
Thanks in advance for any insight!
Award Wallet has been a lifesaver! Before, kept track of everything in a spreadsheet….and that was just the points…but AwardWallet alerts me when points are going to expire!! a great feature.