Late in 2025 an Amex Offer appeared on the UK Marriott Bonvoy American Express card:

Spend £200 at participating Marriott properties in Europe and receive £75 back.

On our account the offer appeared twice. Once on the primary card and once on the authorized user card.

In theory the structure looked like this:

Marriott points would still post on the spend.

The problem was timing.

The offer expired on December 31 and I had no Marriott stays planned before then.

Marriott Amex offers in the UK have occasionally stacked in interesting ways. One past example involved combining a Bonvoy points promotion with a restaurant offer at Gillray’s Steakhouse in Marriott County Hall, which triggered cleanly on the lunchtime steak special.

Experiences like that make these offers hard to ignore.

Hotel promotions usually exclude gift card purchases in the terms. In practice the results are mixed. Front desk gift card purchases sometimes code as normal hotel spend and trigger offers anyway.

There were also a few practical complications to consider.

Currency risk

Marriott gift cards are typically denominated in USD. If a hotel charged a USD amount but settled locally in GBP, the hotel’s exchange rate could introduce an unexpected loss. Sometimes those conversions are modest. Other times they are not.

Amex FX fees

The UK Bonvoy Amex carries a 3 percent foreign exchange fee. If the transaction involved a currency conversion, that fee could combine with the hotel’s rate and erode part of the rebate.

Still, the math was interesting enough to test.

So while my wife and daughter were doing Christmas shopping in central London, I ran a small experiment.

Could a Marriott hotel sell me a gift card that would trigger the rebate?

The plan was simple: walk between a few Marriott properties and see whether any still sold gift cards at the front desk.

This property had worked well for me before when triggering Marriott dining promotions, so it felt like a reasonable place to start.

The front desk staff were unsure whether they sold gift cards and went into the back office to check.

The answer came back quickly.

They no longer sell them.

If a mainstream Marriott property did not sell gift cards, the odds elsewhere suddenly felt lower.

A similar interaction followed.

Staff were initially unsure whether gift cards were sold. Eventually a senior member of the team clarified the situation.

They accept Marriott gift cards.

They do not sell them on property.

From there I walked through Hyde Park. The Christmas market was in full swing and, being London in December, it was already dark by mid-afternoon.

The JW Marriott was next on the route.

I know this property well. When the US Marriott Brilliant card still came with annual Marriott credits, I used to spend them at the steakhouse here.

Unfortunately the lobby was packed with arrivals and the check-in queue was long. Rather than wait, I continued the walk.

Final attempt.

This property used to be one of Marriott’s flagship London hotels and I stayed there frequently before moving abroad.

If any location still handled core Marriott functions like gift card sales, this seemed a good candidate.

I sat down at the front desk and asked.

The answer was direct.

They do not sell Marriott gift cards at the hotel.

After an afternoon walking between four Marriott properties in central London, the experiment ended with a simple result.

None of the hotels sold Marriott gift cards.

Which means the more interesting question never got tested.

Would an on-property gift card purchase have triggered the Amex rebate?

We never found out.

A few patterns emerged.

1. Gift card sales appear to be largely centralized

At least in central London, front desks did not treat gift card sales as a routine activity.

2. Staff uncertainty was common

Several hotels had to check internally before answering. That alone suggests gift card purchases are rare.

3. The stacking strategy remains untested

If a property somewhere still sells Marriott gift cards, the structure could still work. It simply was not possible to test it here.

The original goal was to test whether a gift card purchase could trigger the Amex rebate.

That question remains unanswered.

But the afternoon walk did reveal something else.

Across four central London properties, Marriott gift cards appear to have quietly disappeared from hotel front desks.

Based on visits to these four hotels, buying Marriott gift cards directly at the property does not appear to be possible in central London.

For this experiment, that was the answer.