Bottom Line

We like this as a starter card... HOWEVER its major drawback is that it counts against your 5/24 limit, and for just a 30,000 point bonus. A more universal travel card like the Chase Sapphire or the Capital One Venture might be your better bet.

Why You Might Want This Card

Small Sign-Up Bonus And Counts Against 5/24

This card is one of the newer ones to the Marriott family. It's a decent card if you want to start off slowly collecting points. It has no annual fee, and the 30,000 point sign-up bonus is easy after spending only $1,000 in the first 3 months. You also can earn 3x points at Bonvoy hotels and 2x points on Chase's generous interpretation of travel purchases. While this is a solid beginner card, you still can get some nice benefits: 15 elite night credits annually (enough to get you Silver Status), baggage delay insurance, purchase protection, lost luggage, trip delay reimbursement and Visa Signature Concierge Service. This card will count against your Chase 5/24 rule, so while you can use it as a way to supplement other cards with annual fees, you might want to reconsider so as not to hit that Chase card limit.

Check out our Marriott Bonvoy page for more details on how to best use Bonvoy Points.

Exceptions To The Rule

About Marriott Bonvoy

Bonvoy holds a unique place in this hobby. That’s because the points are a solid value for hotel reservations at the world's largest hotel chain AND Bonvoy points transfer to other point systems. In fact, Bonvoy has more transfer partners than Amex, Citi and Chase combined!!

This creates a unique situation, similar to Chase Ultimate Rewards points. There are nearly no flight or hotel situations that Bonvoy can’t solve. For this reason, we tend to use other hotel points (Hilton in particular) and save our Bonvoy points for unique situations, especially if you want to travel to any exotic locations.

The challenge is the value isn't great on transfers. We'll generally only use transfers for a points top off to buy a flight. Otherwise, we'll use our Bonvoy points for hotel rooms, especially in those hard to book places since Marriott has the most hotels globally.

Where Marriott Bonvoy Bold Fits In This Point Ecosystem

Personal Experience