Alexis Akira Toda

Alexis Akira Toda

Mathematical economist

Is it worth keeping the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card?

2 minute read

Published:

As I occasionally use Marriott, a few years ago I got the Marriott Bonvoy Boundless Card because it was offering a welcome bonus. I won’t go into details, but the basic structure is that the annual fee is $95 and the benefits are 6 Marriott Bonvoy points per dollar spent on Marriott stays and an annual Free Night Award (worth up to 35,000 Marriott Bonvoy points). The value of a Marriott Bonvoy point is about 0.8 cents. (Regardless of the credit card use, Marriott Bonvoy members earn an additional 10 points per dollar spent on stays. As an automatic Gold Member with the American Express Platinum Card, I get a 25% bonus, so 10 points become 12.5 points. But these points are not included in the above calculation because they are independent of the credit card.)

I only use this card for Marriott payments. This year, I spent $1084 for Marriott stays and collected 6504 points. (I checked my statement but the annual fee payment does not generate any points.) So, if we evaluate the Free Night Award at face value, it means I collected \(35000+6504=41504\) points, which are worth about $332. Subtracting the $95 annual fee, the return on spending is \((332-95)/1084\times 100=21.9\%\). Actually, since I don’t use the card often and it was tedious to keep track of benefits and restrictions, when I tried to cancel the card, I was offered a $50 statement credit for retention, so I decided to keep it. So, in the end, it is not a bad deal at all, even though I need to remember to use the Free Night Award. (This is a bit tricky, because most of my travels are business trips that I get reimbursed for. I have to optimize my personal trips, which is why it is tedious.)

However, based on my experience, the deal is slightly better than this. The reason is that when I book a Marriott hotel directly from their website, the listed price is often a bit (around 5%) lower than on other travel websites such as Expedia or American Express Travel. So, although I am not very excited about this card, I will likely keep it.

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