Marriott Extends Free Night Awards Through August 2021
As the COVID-19 pandemic is still around and affecting travel planes for many people, Marriott has announced that it will extend Free Night Awards and points expiration pause. Let’s look at the details.
Free Night Awards
To provide you ample time to redeem points, the expiration of points will be paused until August 1, 2021. At that time, your points will only expire if your account has been inactive for at least 24 months.
If you certificate expires in the next nine months, it will be extended through August of 2021.
Effective December 11, 2020, members who currently have a Free Night Award (FNA) that had [has] an original expiration date in 2020, or which will expire before July 31, 2021, as part of their cobrand credit card benefit, annual choice benefit, promotions or travel package will be able to redeem it through August 1, 2021. Free Night Awards with an original expiration date prior to 2020 will not be eligible for the additional extension. Members do not need to take any action. The system will automatically update your Account with these extensions on December 11, 2020.
There is an important exclusion here. This new extension does not apply to certificates that were previously extended. Certificates with original expiration date prior to 2020 will not be extended again.
Points Expiration
Marriott has also extended the pause on points expirations.
To provide you ample time to redeem points, the expiration of points will be paused until August 1, 2021. At that time, your points will only expire if your account has been inactive for at least 24 months.
Conclusion
It’s good to see Marriott extend Free Night Awards once again. Sadly this will not apply to FNAs that were expiring before 2020 and have already been extended. With recent spikes in COVID-19 cases around the country and the world, it’s nice to have the opportunity to use these certificates through August of next year.
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What doesn’t make sense to me is this line – “Free Night Awards with an original expiration date prior to 2020 will not be eligible for the additional extension”. Doesn’t that suggest that the free night would have expired in 2019 ? And since no extension was done prior to Covid, wouldn’t those FNA’s already have expired in 2019 before any extension was granted for them ? That line makes no sense to me. The way i read it as is – ANY FNA that would have expired at any time in 2020 is not extended to 8/1/2021 but maybe i am reading it wrong.
mistype – meant to type NOW extended to 8/1/2021
I have 2 that were extended to Jan 2021. I checked and the dates have not been extended. If they are not extended until December, can I make reservations for March with them now?
Any news on getting Ritz Certs extended?
I just checked, and my certificate still lists an expiration date in January.
Is this new expiration dates expected to show on my marriott.com account?
I believe they are going to change it for the new date on Dec 11th so check again on the 12th
I have FNA awards that was extended from mid year 2020 to Jan 2021, does that mean it won’t be extended towards Aug 2021?
Hmm. I had an award night set to schedule in December. They automatically extended it to the end of January (without me asking). Does this mean I won’t get the new extension?
That is great news for me. I had 3 nights from credit cards that were going to expire at end of Jan and the end of Feb and had no use for them at this point since I am not traveling. So this works out great since I will most likely need some one night stays here and there before Sept