Marriott Elite membership offers some impressive benefits to frequent travelers. However, these benefits become especially compelling once you accrue at least 50 elite nights in a calendar year and reach Marriott Platinum Elite status.
One of the perks you’ll receive is the ability to select Marriott’s Annual Select benefits. You can choose one when you reach 50 elite nights in a calendar year, and the second when you reach 75 elite nights – which is also the milestone toward your Marriott Titanium Elite status.
If you accumulate at least 50 elite nights with Marriott Bonvoy during 2024, the deadline to select select benefits is February 1, 2025. The first week of the month.
To help you make the best choice, I’ll discuss the Marriott Annual Select offer options available at each tier.
Overview of Marriott’s Annual Select Benefits
Once you accumulate 50 Elite Nights in a calendar year, you’ll earn Marriott’s Annual Select benefits. After you stay 75 Elite Nights in a calendar year, you’ll receive your second Annual Select benefit. However, as you’ll learn later in this guide, the two levels of Marriott Annual Select benefits options are not the same.
How to Choose Marriott’s Annual Select Benefits
To select your Annual Select benefit, visit this page on the Marriott website. You must be logged in to your Marriott Bonvoy account to select your benefits.
Once you make your choice you can’t change it, so choose wisely. If you are eligible for the 50-night and 75-night offers, you must select both during the same period.
Related: The 29 Best Marriott Hotels in the World
When to Choose Marriott’s Annual Select Benefit
If you accrue 50 or 75 Elite Nights in 2024, you have until February 1, 2025 at 11:59 PM ET to select your Annual Select benefit. Make your selection and Marriott will automatically select your nightly upgrade award.
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How to Earn Elite Nights on Marriott Bonvoy
Earning 50 or 75 elite nights in a calendar year may sound daunting. However, Marriott offers several ways to earn elite stays. When you book directly with Marriott, you can earn Elite Nights at participating Marriott brands, even by redeeming Marriott points or using a free night award certificate.
You can also earn Elite Stay points with select Marriott Bonvoy credit cards. You can earn up to 25 Elite Stay points per year with your Marriott Consumer Card, and an additional 15 Elite Stay Points with your Marriott Business Card. Some Marriott cards even offer additional Elite Night points when you reach certain spending thresholds.
Finally, it’s worth noting that you must meet the applicable Elite Stay threshold to unlock select benefits. Although Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card As long as your account remains open, you will automatically receive Platinum Elite status but will not be eligible for benefit selections. You must reach 50 Elite Stay Points to receive select offers.
RELATED: Here’s Why You Need a Marriott Bonvoy Credit Card for Personal and Business
50 Nights Annual Select Benefit Options
When you accumulate 50 Elite Nights in a calendar year, you’ll unlock your first Marriott Annual Select benefit. Here’s how you can get the 50 nights earned through stays in 2024:
- Five Elite Night Points
- Five nightly upgrade rewards
- $1,000 off mattress
- Charitable donation of $100
- Gift Marriott Silver Elite status to another member
Most of these benefits are difficult to value, so let’s take a closer look at each option. I’ll start with an option that’s unlikely to make sense to most elite members.
Complimentary Marriott Silver Elite Membership
Giving others status may initially sound like a good choice. However, the value of Marriott Silver Elite membership is not high because the main benefits are 10% points bonus on paid stays and priority late check-out.
Instead of using your Marriott Collection benefits to gift memberships, you can encourage your friends or family to get a Marriott membership through a credit card. For example, the primary cardholder of the no-annual-fee Marriott Bonvoy Bold® Credit Card will automatically receive Elite Silver status and receive five Elite Stay Points per calendar year as a cardholder benefit.
Make a $100 charitable donation
You can choose to make a $100 donation to several charities, including the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, the World Wildlife Fund and the Arne M. Sorensen Hospitality Fund, as part of your Marriott Annual Select offer.
If you don’t have access to any other annual election benefit options, a $100 charitable donation is a great option and may be the right decision. However, I prefer to earn points and miles by donating to a charity of my choice and retain the ability to choose one of the other benefits.
RELATED: How to Donate Points and Miles to Charity
$1,000 off mattress
If you like a specific Marriott brand mattress, you can buy a new mattress for your home. If you are considering purchasing a Marriott mattress, you should consider a promotional code for the full retail value of $1,000 on select Marriott brand mattresses and box springs as your annual selection offer.
However, you cannot combine the one-time $1,000 discount with other offers. Although this selection offer can provide great value, relatively few people are in the market for a specific hotel mattress. Therefore, this option is not suitable for most travelers.
Earn 5 Elite Stay Points
For some travelers, choosing five Elite Stay Points for Marriott’s Annual Collection is a smart move. Marriott credits Elite Stay points toward the year you earn them. Therefore, if you are 5 or fewer nights away from earning Titanium Elite status or the new Marriott Bonvoy Lifetime status in the 2024 calendar year, it may be helpful to select Elite Night Points.
Get 5 nightly upgrade rewards
Nightly upgrade awards are valid for one night’s confirmable upgrade in select premium rooms and suites at each hotel. Therefore, you will need six upgrade award certificates per night to apply for an upgrade for a six-night booking.
Many members keep their nightly upgrade awards for stays at higher-end Marriott Bonvoy hotels, while others keep them for stays where they want more space. However, some members find these rewards difficult to use, with upgrades not starting to settle until three days before your arrival.
If you select five nightly upgrade bonuses as a select offer, your bonus will expire on December 31st of the year after you receive your bonus. So if you stay 50 nights in 2024 and select five nightly upgrade awards as your choice offer by February 1, 2025, your nightly upgrade awards will be due on December 31, 2025 maturity.
75 Nights Selected Privilege Options
After reaching 75 elite nights in a calendar year, you’ll earn Marriott Titanium Elite status and receive a second annual selection of benefits. If you reach this threshold in 2024, you can choose from the following benefits:
- Five Elite Night Points
- Five nightly upgrade rewards
- $1,000 off mattress
- Charitable donation of $100
- Gift Marriott Gold Elite status to another member
- Free night awards worth up to 40,000 points
As you can see, the options here are essentially the same as those available once you hit the 50-night threshold. I’ll skip the charitable donations, nightly upgrade rewards, and mattress discounts because I’ve already discussed those options in the previous section. Again, I won’t discuss giving away Gold Elite membership because it’s relatively easy to get Marriott membership with a credit card.
However, let’s take a closer look at the other two options.
Earn 5 Elite Stay Points
Earlier in this article, I considered how some travelers choose 5 Elite Night Points as a 50-night annual selection offer to achieve Titanium Elite or Lifetime Elite status. However, for Titanium Elite members, it may also make sense to opt for five Elite Night Points to earn Ambassador Elite status. This tier typically requires 100 elite nights and $23,000 in annual Marriott spending.
This option may only make sense if you end 2024 with 5 elite nights at the higher Lifetime Elite status, or have 95 to 99 elite nights with at least $23,000 in qualifying spend at Marriott annually.
Get free night rewards worth up to 40,000 points
The final option, unique to the 75-Night Annual Collection, is a free night award worth up to 40,000 points. This free night award is slightly more valuable than the 35,000-point free night award certificate associated with many Marriott Bonvoy cards.
According to TPG’s December 2024 valuation, 40,000 Marriott points are worth $340. So, this is definitely a valuable option. However, if you already have a lot of Marriott Bonvoy points and great free night awards to pay for your future travel, you may want to choose other benefits.
Which Marriott Annual Select benefit should you choose?
For most 50-night members, the best Marriott Annual Select offer is the five nightly upgrade bonuses. At the 75-night level, the best Annual Choice benefit is typically five additional nightly upgrade awards or a free night award worth up to 40,000 points.
However, if you qualify for Ambassador Elite, Titanium Elite, or Lifetime status, five nights of Elite Night Credit may be a good option. Likewise, if you’re looking to buy a Marriott-branded mattress, a $1,000 discount might be your best bet.
You may be wondering what I typically choose for my annual election benefits. When I earned Titanium Elite status in 2021, 2022, and 2023, I selected 5 suite night awards (now nightly upgrade awards) for the 50-night option and up to 40,000 points worth for the 75-night option free night award.
However, I have only accrued 71 Elite Nights in 2024, so I plan to choose 5 Elite Night Points as my 50-night benefit. By doing this, I will reach 76 elite nights in 2024, earn Titanium Elite status by February 2026, and have until February 1, 2025 to make the 75-night selection. There may be five nightly upgrade bonuses to choose from, so I have those in my account when I get data points for the story. However, I believe that if I didn’t want to receive a nightly upgrade award for editorial reasons, a free night award worth up to 40,000 points would probably provide me with more value.
bottom line
Marriott’s annual Select benefits are great value, with ample options for every threshold. These options are not all equal in value, so consider carefully which benefit is most valuable to you before making a decision.
Before concluding this article, it is also worth mentioning that Marriott Bonvoy Premier Card Offers similar benefits: Outstanding Earn Choice Awards. Cardholders can earn the Brilliant Earned Choice Award after they spend $60,000 in qualifying purchases using their Bonvoy Brilliant card in a calendar year. Brilliant Earned Choice Awards (you must select by February 1 of the year following purchase) include a choice of five nightly upgrade awards, plus a free night award worth up to 85,000 points or a bed from any Marriott Bonvoy retail brand $1,000 discount.
