The current Marriott Bonvoy Boundless credit card offer of 5 free night certificates after $5000 of spend in 3 months looks good. It piqued our interest and was the impetus for this project. We’re going to London for four nights in the fall and thought that would be the perfect opportunity to use the Marriott certificates. The Marriott certificates are for up to 50,000 points. They can be “topped off”, but to a maximum of 65,000 points. Should be plenty for a nice place in London, right? Let’s search and see what we can get for those certificates.
Initial Search
Our initial search brought up 56 hotels in the London area for our dates (October 2-6), but we were a little shocked at the rates. 91,000 and 117,000 points per night for the first two that came up.! These are very nice properties, and the prices reflect this. Out of all 56 hotels, 31 in London proper were available on points. We like to be in the city center and narrowed our search to within 1.5 miles of the center. Unfortunately, the redemption rates range from 84,000 to 117,625 miles per night. So not a single one qualifies for use of the certificates, as you can see in the table below. The hotels are listed in order of distance from the city center. Very nice hotels, but NO opportunity to use free night certificates.
Expanding the Search
We tried expanding our search a bit, to hotels within 3.5 miles of the city center. That resulted in some success. We found 8 hotels that qualify for use of the free night certificates, all but one requiring “top offs”. All eight hotels are rated 4.0-4.5 on TripAdvisor and are less than a 15 minute walk from a tube station. The Town Hall Hotel is the only one available for under 50,000 points each night.
The Town Hall Hotel is 3.5 miles from the city center, but offers a much lower points rate than the others and the highest point value. A tube station is just a 5 minute walk away. The downside is that you will be leaving about 10,000 points/night on the table with your certificates here. Kensington area hotels (Residence Inn Kensington and Hotel Xenia) are near Kensington Palace and Gardens, the Bridge Residence Inns are near Tower Bridge on the opposite side of the Thames from the city, and the Marriott Maida Vale and Regents Park are close to the zoo. The choice really depends on what you want to do in the city and the points you have available or want to spend.
Overall Conclusions
The conclusions from our search for Marriott hotels in London using points certificates on October 2-6, 2024 are:
- No Marriott hotels in the London city center qualify to use the 50,000 point free night certificates, even if “topped up” to the maximum of 65,000 points.
- There are options available for using the certificates, but all are further out from the city. We focused on hotels that were within 3.5 miles of the city center.
- The Town Hall Hotel is the only hotel that can be entirely covered with the free night certificates for our dates. It is right at 3.5 miles out but has good reviews and tube access.
- There are another 7 hotels that qualify for using the 50,000 point certificates with “top ups”. They are all rated at least 4.0 on TripAdvisor and are within a 15 minute walk of a tube station. All workable choices if you are comfortable outside the city center. Your choice depends on what you want to be near and how many points you have.
- Be sure to research hotels and know how valuable the 50,000 point certificates are to you before getting the Bonvoy Boundless card based on the 5 certificate bonus.
If you want to know more about how the central London Marriott options compare with the other brands see our post Comparing London Hotel Awards.
