Marriott Rewards is one of the best earn and burn hotel loyalty programs around. The points aren’t particularly valuable, but they’re easy to earn. And one of the best way to earn points has been through the ShopMyWay Mall. But not anymore.
ShopMyWay Mall
ShopMyWay Mall used to be a great way to earn Marriott Rewards points. You could earn up to 15 miles per dollar, though the average was usually lower. And as is the case with basically all rewards earnings, I don’t actually earn that much. But over the past few years I did manage to ear almost 44,000 Marriott Rewards points through the ShopMyWay Mall. That may not be a lot of points, especially when most desirable properties are 35,000 points or more per night, but it did help.
End of a Benefit
Unfortunately, over the years, participating merchants had a tendency to change, often negatively. For example, Best Buy withdrew from the mall, and then drugstore.com left before going out of business. However, it appears that Marriott Rewards no longer participates with ShopMyWay at all. This came as a big surprise to me, as I had just used the portal about a month ago. In fact, I had only found out the other day from another member of the Marriott Rewards Insiders community. According to ShopMyWya, however, the affiliation ended on January 16, 2017. Any purchases made prior to this date will be credit to Marriott Rewards. Purchases made after will credit to ShopMyWay’s program and can redeemed for United Miles (5:1) or cash (300:1).
While it is entirely possible (likely even) that I missed any communications, I don’t recall ever receiving notice of this service ending. And while it’s totally in their right to do so per terms & conditions, it is rather disappointing. This is especially disconcerting, as Marriott Rewards itself is sort of in limbo. With Marriott merging with Starwood, changes to the program are inevitable, but details are scarce. All we know so far is that changes likely won’t come until 2018.
Alternative
The ending of Marriott Rewards’ partnership with ShopMyWay is disappointing, but there is an alternative. Chase UltimateRewards points do transfer to Marriott Rewards at a 1:1 ratio. And guess what? UltimateRewards does have its own mall.
Earning potential is pretty good with UltimateRewards too. In fact, the they’re currently running a 4 points per dollar rate on Apple purchases. This is much higher than the special rates of 2 points per dollar on ShopMyWay Mall. Of course, you’ll need to have a Chase Sapphire Preferred or Reserve card to transfer UltimateRewards points to Marriott Rewards.
Final Thoughts
On the surface, this “devaluation” of Marriott Rewards sucks, but it isn’t that bad. If you have one of the Chase Sapphire cards, you can still earn Marriott Rewards points via a shopping portal. You just have to take an extra step to get those points now. However, if for some reason I wasn’t being ignorant and Marriott really didn’t communicate the change, then that makes me nervous about bigger changes coming in the future. But for that, we’ll have to simply wait and see.