How I earned 225k points from one promo

Good morning from my Singapore Airlines business-class cocoon on my way home to Indonesia!

I’ve been working on a project for the last month and a half, and today I’m excited to share it with you. Let’s dive in:

• 🏨 How I gamed Marriott’s promo to earn 225k points

• ✈️ Buy Lufthansa miles for great value

• 🌍 Coverage built for the way you actually travel

🏨 How I gamed Marriott’s promo to earn 225k points

A couple of months ago, I told you about a new Marriott Bonvoy promotion to earn 2,500 bonus points per stay.

I also told you how I wanted to make Marriott regret this promo – by spending a month staying in a new Marriott hotel every night to maximize it.

And obviously, that is ridiculous – there’s no way someone could spend an entire month staying in over 30 different Marriott hotels…

… except… that’s exactly what I did. 🙃 

I earned 225,461 points from this promotion

I completed a total of 33 stays, almost all of which were just a single night. From that 2,500-point-per-stay bonus, I earned 82,500 points:

But that’s not all... I also earned:

• 10x points per dollar for being a Marriott member

• 7.5x bonus points for being Titanium elite

• 6x points for using my Marriott card to pay

On top of all of that, I also earned welcome gift points (which you get for being Platinum elite or higher).

At many brands, it was 1,000 points per stay… but since I was doing this every night, that often worked out to be an extra 1,000 points per night.

I had a few stays in Africa and Europe toward the beginning of this promo, but most of my stays were in Hong Kong and mainland China. I stayed in places like Taiyuan, Qingdao, Changsha, Wuhan, Urumqi, Chengdu, Yining, and more.

That means that tons of my stays only cost around $50 per night, like this one in Urumqi:

My stay cost exactly $51 total for the night. Here is the breakdown of what I earned from that stay:

• 510 points for being a member

• 383 elite bonus points

• 500 points for the welcome amenity

• 2,500 bonus points from the promotion

• 306 points from credit card spend

• Total: 4,199 Marriott points

If I value those points at around 1 cent each (which I do, because that’s usually the bare minimum I redeem them for), that’s $42 in value.

That means from stays like this, I got an 82% return on my spend – and I had a bunch of stays at that price point during the promo… 🤯🤯🤯

I also got pretty creative

To trigger the promo, all of these had to be cash bookings. So you might think I spent a lot of money.

But actually, I didn’t really… 😏

You see, there are ways to book cash stays without actually spending cash.

For example, some of these stays were booked with Rove Miles as loyalty-eligible bookings.

Take this stay in Hong Kong at the W – it cost around $400, but I booked it with 23,000 Rove Miles instead.

As far as the hotel can tell, this is a cash booking.

So even though I paid miles for it, I still earned points (including all elite bonuses and promotion points).

And this brings me to an annoying but interesting quirk to Rove…

Rove’s loyalty-eligible bookings don’t always work correctly

I found out very quickly on my trip that if you book loyalty-eligible stays with Rove Miles at the last minute, the hotel often will not charge Rove for the stay.

As a result, I was required to pay out of pocket for most of my stays – even though I had already paid with my miles.

This is something that Rove now openly discloses when making these bookings (you’re welcome, Rove, for being your guinea pig 😉).

Anyway, I saved all of my receipts, and Rove reimbursed me for all of the stays that weren’t charged properly.

But this also meant that I got credit card points for stays that I wasn’t supposed to. And since I used my Marriott card to earn 6x, it actually added up to a lot.

The bottom line

In the end, I racked up 225,000 points and 47 elite nights, putting me WELL over the threshold to renew my titanium status, which also earned me another 40,000-point free night certificate.

I don’t suspect many of you have the flexibility to game this promo quite like I did…

But I hope it serves as an example of how, even if you do 5% or 10% of what I did, there are ways to get creative and make these promos more valuable – and more fun – than they may seem at first glance.

✈️ Buy Lufthansa miles for great value

Lufthansa Miles & More is a very valuable program… but there aren’t many ways to earn Lufthansa miles. Plus, there’s only one way to transfer to them (from my fav, Rove Miles).

But one way you can rack up some miles is to buy them. And Lufthansa does things a little differently on this front…

They sell “bundles” that include things like car rental discounts, lounge pass discounts, bonus miles on hotel bookings, and most importantly, Lufthansa Miles.

Right now, they’re offering a best-ever bonus on purchased bundles through May 31st.

Here’s how it works:

You can think of this as effectively buying miles and just forget about the other “perks” of the bundles, which are pretty much useless.

Here is what the pricing looks like with this deal:

If you look at the base level of paying $110 for 4,500 miles, you might think that’s crazy…

…but you might be wrong.

You see, Lufthansa has some INSANE deals, especially for European flights.

For example, flights between Vienna and cities like Copenhagen, Venice, and Warsaw cost as few as 435 miles right now:

Yes, you have to pay around $61 USD in taxes, but that’s still great considering you’re saving $100 on the flight. 👇

That $110 purchase of 4,500 miles could book you TEN short regional European flights like this, saving you $1,000.

In other words, for the right flights, your return on spend could be hundreds of percent.

I don’t recommend blindly buying these bundles… but if Lufthansa is offering deals that could save you money like the examples I just provided, it could work out REALLY well in your favor.

I’ve ranted long enough today, so I’ll leave it here…

I hope you enjoyed this more technical newsletter, and I look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Peace,

6.9175° S, 107.6191° E

With contributions by Sam Anthony and Alison Carrico.