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  Hotel Strategies

Marriott Platinum status is pretty value due to their free club access, free breakast and room upgrade policies.

If you need a boost to earn Marriott status, you can earn an additional 10 credits towards elite status by booking an inexpensive meeting with Marriott.

Just to be clear, Marriott won’t give you a bunch of points for booking an inexpensive meeting, but they will give you credit towards elite status.

The basics

You need 50 elite night credits to earn Marriott Platinum status, and you can get 15 credits by having one of the Marriott / SPG cards. That leaves 35 credits to qualify for Platinum. If you book a meeting with Marriott, you get 10 more elite night credits, dropping the "stay" requirement to 25 nights.

Unfortunately, Marriott will only award the 10 credits for the first meeting you book each year. You can earn an additional credit for up to 20 hotel rooms booked each year as part of a meeting, but these aren't credits for booking the meeting itself, and isn't particularly helpful for most people.

An inexpensive meeting might cost $100-150, but it is possible to schedule a meeting for as little as $50.

If you already have a need to host meetings and events, this is unbelievably fantastic. If not, it can still be a great way to get a boost towards higher-level elite status. Just book a meeting that you don’t really need to go to.

Tips

• If you earn your status early in a year, you can get over two years of Platinum benefits. Your status lasts until the end of February, after the end of the year following the year you earn it. If you earn Platinum status any time during 2018, you’ll keep it until February of 2020. If you earn it in January, you’ll get the benefits for more than two years.
• If you don’t really need the room for a meeting, book a two-person meeting for only a single hour. You’ll get a rate that is half the daily rate or lower. You’ll want to turn down any extras like catering, or A/V equipment.
• You usually don’t have to show up for the meeting. However, as a courtesy, some hotels will cancel your meeting room if you don’t show up. You won’t be charged for the meeting, but you won’t receive your credits, and you’ll have to try again. Nevertheless, the cheapest way to earn your status is to book meetings at the cheapest possible hotels you can find, anywhere in the world, without any plan of actually attending the meetings.
• Many hotels don’t know about the elite night credit benefit, but don’t worry, you’ll get your credits. If you ask the hotel staff about the 10 elite night credits, they will often not know what you are talking about, or tell you that you aren’t going to get them. Don’t worry, they are really part of the program. Just make sure you are "registered to receive points" for your meeting, and you’ll get your elite night credits as well.
• It can take some time for your credits to show up. Not every hotel is diligent about entering your meeting information into the Marriott system that credits your reward points and elite nights, and Marriott has a waiting period of a couple of additional weeks. It might take some time for your credits to show up, and you frequently have to call or email the hotel to remind them to credit your points. Just ask them whether they have entered your meeting into the Marriott tool, so that you can receive points for your meeting.
• You don’t earn elite night credits for meetings at Residence Inn, TownePlace Suites, Marriott Executive Apartments, or Protea hotels. Your most likely targets are Springhill Suites, Courtyards, and Marriott hotels.

Finding cheap meeting rooms

The Rewarding Events webpage lets you search for meeting room availability.

The problem is that it will simply show a “Request Quote” button for most of hotels, instead of an actual meeting price. When it does show a meeting price, it will be for a full-day meeting room rental.

• If you shorten the meeting to 4 hours or less, the price will drop exactly in half. So, the cheapest meeting at the Courtyard above is $125. If you don’t need the room, it is best to book just a one hour meeting, early or late in the day, so that the hotel can most easily resell the room for other meetings.
• If you are willing to hunt around a bit, you can find quoted rates of as low as $150 per day, or $75 for a shorter meeting. The cheapest meetings in Canadian hotels are CAD 100, which works out about the same. Expect to pay around 20% in additional taxes and fees. It is possible to find meetings for only $100 per day, or $50 for a shorter meeting, but they are rare.
• The best way to find cheap rates is to search an entire state at a time. The location box is oriented around searching for cities, but if you enter the name of a state, and scroll all the way down to the bottom of the suggestion list, you’ll find an option for searching the entire state. This way, you can quickly identify the cheapest meetings available in states like Texas, Ohio, and Florida, which have a lot of hotels in less expensive locations. This also works to search for entire countries like Canada. However, it won’t work for searching the entire United States, because the website can’t show that many results in the listings.
• You might get a better rate if you request a quote, but you can’t tell until you try. When you press the request quote button, you can add up to 3 hotels. Put a low number in the budget box, and make sure to add a note, stating you only need the room for an hour. You can also try negotiating directly with a nearby hotel that is already on the cheaper end of the scale. There have been people online who have been able to negotiate rates as low as $50 per meeting, with a nearby hotel, to take care of all of their meetings.

Guide to the Marriott Bonvoy Reward Program

Boost Your Hotel Status

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