It’s widely understood that Marriott Bonvoy sells points at a discount from time to time. What’s less often examined is how those discounts behave over time.
This piece applies the same day-by-day framing used in the companion Hilton and IHG analyses, but the conclusion for Marriott is different. Marriott does not repeatedly converge on a single reference price in the way Hilton or IHG do. Instead, its buy-points promotions repeatedly land within a narrow, bounded price range, even though the timing and structure of each sale varies.
The chart below plots each major Marriott buy-points promotion over time, with bar height showing the effective cents-per-point price at the top tier and bar width showing how long each sale lasted.
The result is not perfect uniformity, but it is stable. Since 2022, pricing outcomes have clustered tightly, with no evidence of a new lower floor or a widening range.
Scope and definitions
To keep the comparison aligned with the Hilton and IHG studies, this analysis focuses on the modern promotional timespan where pricing has stabilised.
Time window:
1 June 2024 to 31 January 2026 (same as the IHG/Hilton studies)
What counts:
Buy-points promotions where effective pricing fell into Marriott’s established discount band, approximately 0.83 to 0.89 cents per point.
50% bonuses (~0.83 cpp) included
40–45% bonuses (~0.86–0.89 cpp) included
“Up to” language counted where top-tier pricing reached that range
Lower tiers ignored entirely
A short, targeted offer in August–September 2025 is intentionally excluded, as it was account-specific and did not reliably deliver pricing in this band across the membership base.
Marriott’s pricing pattern looks different
Unlike IHG, which runs long and explicit 100% bonus windows, or Hilton, which cycles through frequent tiered offers, Marriott’s buy-points strategy is less about consistency of each promotion and more about price stability.
Looking at promotions from 2021 onward, a clear pattern emerges:
~0.83 cpp appears repeatedly during 50% bonus windows
~0.86–0.89 cpp fills the gaps during 40–45% promotions
Pricing below ~0.83 cpp has not reappeared since late 2021
Pricing materially above ~0.95 cpp is now rare and short-lived
In other words, while the timing of Marriott sales varies, the price outcome does not vary wildly.
What the history shows
Based on promotion histories compiled and reported over time by Frequent Miler and LoyaltyLobby:
Marriott typically runs 2–4 buy-points sales per year
At least one sale per year has reliably reached ~0.83 cpp
The remaining sales almost always land in the 0.86–0.89 cpp range
There is no evidence, post-2021, of a new lower structural price floor
That makes Marriott different from Hilton and IHG. The question is rarely whether a sale will return. It’s whether waiting meaningfully improves the price.
Historically, it does not.
The practical decision problem
For Marriott, the timing question looks like this:
If points are not on sale today, how long would you typically have to wait until another point sale promo appears, in the 0.83-0.89 range?
With Hilton, waiting often pays because another ~0.5 cpp offer is usually weeks away.
With IHG, waiting pays because 100% bonuses cover long stretches of the calendar.
With Marriott, waiting mostly changes when you can buy, and only marginally, what you’ll pay.
Excluding days where a sale was already live, these metrics describe the distribution of the time to wait until the next 0.83-0.89 cpp sale. Conditioning only on days where no sale was already live, and using only fully observed sale gaps within the analysis window:
• Median wait: 25 days
• 75% of waits: 40 days
• 90% of waits: 61 days
• Longest observed gap: 84 days
What matters is the scale. For Marriott, waiting is more likely to be many weeks, not days. That is materially slower than Hilton, but still far from the long dry spells people often assume.
Importantly, this waiting time does not usually buy you a better price. It mostly changes when you can transact, not what you will pay.
What this implies for buying Marriott points
1. ~0.83–0.89 cpp functions as Marriott’s market price
These are no longer exceptional discounts. They are the program’s recurring reference band.
A 40% bonus at ~0.89 cpp is not “worse” in a meaningful sense than a 50% bonus at ~0.83 cpp unless the redemption math is already tight.
2. Urgency is usually overstated
Most promotions are framed as limited-time opportunities. In practice, similar pricing reliably reappears.
The decision is rarely forced by fear of missing the “best” sale.
3. Buy points only with a defined use
Price stability does not justify speculative buying. It simply reduces timing risk when a redemption is already planned.
Decision rule (Marriott)
If a buy-points sale is live today:
Treat 0.83–0.89 cpp as baseline pricing
Buy only with a specific redemption in mind
Do not assume this is a rare opportunity
If no sale is live:
Waiting is reasonable
Expect pricing to return to roughly the same band
Do not expect materially better pricing than ~0.83 cpp
Exception:
Override this rule when award availability is genuinely scarce and the cash alternative is materially worse.
With Marriott it’s a tougher call than with IHG and Hilton. If you’re trying to make plans and an interesting redemption opportunity is available, assuming you’ll typically have to wait around 25 days for a buy-points sale is a very different logistical proposition from the roughly 10-day waits we observed historically for IHG and Hilton.
Why this analysis exists
Marriott buy-points promotions are often discussed as isolated events. Viewed that way, each sale looks different.
Viewed across time, they are not.
Once you look at where pricing repeatedly ends up, the apparent variability is actually a narrow, predictable range.
For Marriott, buying points is not about catching the perfect sale. If a buy-points promo is coming, you likely already know about where the pricing will be.
Data and sources
Promotion windows and bonus structures are drawn from historical reporting by Frequent Miler and LoyaltyLobby.
All synthesis, framing, and decision rules are original to this analysis and are designed to align with the same methodology used in the companion Hilton and IHG studies.
Companion pieces: