Marriott elite status offers frequent travelers some impressive benefits. But the benefits become especially attractive when you earn at least 50 elite nights in a calendar year and reach Marriott Platinum Elite status.
One of the benefits you will receive is the ability to select the Marriott Annual Choice Benefit. You can choose one once you reach 50 elite nights in a calendar year, and a second when you reach 75 elite nights — the milestone at which you’ll earn Marriott Titanium Elite status.
If you’ve earned at least 50 elite nights with Marriott Bonvoy during 2024, the deadline to select your Choice Benefit is February 1, 2025. This is actually longer than previous years, where the deadline was usually in the first week of January.
To help you make the best choice, I’ll discuss the Marriott Annual Choice benefit options available at each level.
Marriott Annual Choice Benefits Overview
Once you earn 50 elite nights in a calendar year, you earn Marriott Annual Choice benefits. After reaching 75 elite nights in a calendar year you will receive another annual preference benefit. However, as you’ll learn later in this guide, Marriott Annual Choice benefit options are not the same at both levels.
How to choose your Marriott Annual Choice Benefit
To select your annual preferred benefits, visit This page on Marriott’s website. You must be signed in to your Marriott Bonvoy account to select your benefit.
Once you make your choice you can’t change it, so choose wisely. If you are eligible for 50-night and 75-night benefits, you must opt for both during the same session.
Related: 29 Best Marriott Hotels in the World
When to choose your Marriott Annual Choice Benefit
If you accrued 50 or 75 Elite nights in 2024, you must elect your Annual Choice benefits by February 1, 2025 at 11:59 pm EST. If you do not make your selection(s) by the deadline, Marriott will automatically select nightly upgrade awards for you.
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How to earn Marriott Bonvoy elite nights
Earning 50 or 75 elite nights in a calendar year seems difficult. However, Marriott offers multiple ways to earn elite nights. Even when you book directly with Marriott, you can earn elite nights at participating Marriott brands by redeeming Marriott Points or using Free Night Award Certificates.
You can also earn elite night credit with select Marriott Bonvoy credit cards. You can earn up to 25 Elite Night Credits per year with the Marriott Consumer Card and up to an additional 15 with the Marriott Business Card. Some Marriott cards also offer additional elite night credits when you reach certain spending thresholds.
Finally, it’s worth noting that you must reach the applicable Elite Knight threshold to unlock the Choice benefit. When the Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant® American Express® Card Automatic Platinum comes with elite status, which is not eligible for benefit selection, as long as your account remains open. You must reach 50 Elite Night Credits to receive the Choice Benefit.
RELATED: Here’s Why You Need the Marriott Bonvoy Credit Card for Personal and Business
50-Night Annual Choice Benefit Options
You’ll unlock your first Marriott Annual Choice benefit when you earn 50 elite nights in a calendar year. Following are your options for the 50-night benefit earned by night in 2024:
- Five elite night credits
- Five Nightly Upgrade Awards
- $1,000 off mattresses
- $100 charitable donation
- Gift Marriott Silver Elite status to another member
Most of these benefits are difficult to evaluate, so let’s examine each option more closely. I’ll start with options that are unlikely to make sense to most elite members.
Gift Marriott Silver Elite status
Instead of using your Marriott Choice benefit for gift status, you can encourage a friend or family member to earn Marriott status via credit card. For example, primary cardholders of the no-annual-fee Marriott Bonvoy Bold® Credit Card receive automatic Silver Elite status and five Elite Night credits each calendar year as cardholder benefits.
Make a $100 charity donation
You are the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund, World Wildlife Fund and Arne M. You can choose to make a $100 donation to several charities — including the Sorenson Hospitality Fund — as your Marriott Annual Choice Benefit.
The $100 charitable donation is a nice touch and may be the right decision if you can’t use any of the other annual choice benefit options. However, I would prefer to earn points and miles on a donation to a charity of my choice and retain my ability to choose one of the other benefits.
Related: How You Can Donate Your Points and Miles to Charity
Get $1,000 off a mattress
If you like a mattress on a certain Marriott brand, you can buy a new one for your home. If you’re shopping for a Marriott mattress, you should consider choosing a promo code for $1,000 off full retail value for mattresses and box springs from select Marriott brands as your Annual Choice Benefit.
However, you cannot combine the one-time $1,000 discount with other offers. Although this choice benefit can offer great value, relatively few people are in the market for specific hotel mattresses. As such, this option will not apply to most travelers.
Earn 5 elite night credits
Choosing five Elite Night Credits for your Marriott Annual Choice Benefit is smart for some travelers. Marriott will post the Elite Night Credits to the year you earned them. Therefore, selecting Elite Night Credits may be useful if you are five or fewer nights short of earning Titanium Elite status or the new Marriott Bonvoy Lifetime status during the 2024 calendar year.
Earn 5 Nightly Upgrade Awards
Each Nightly Upgrade Award is valid for one night’s confirmable upgrade to select premium rooms and suites designated by each property. Therefore, you will need six Nightly Upgrade Award Certificates to request an upgrade for a six-night reservation.
Many members save their nightly upgrade awards for stays at high-end Marriott Bonvoy properties, while others collect them for nights they need more space. However, some members find it difficult to redeem these rewards, and upgrade clearing won’t start until three days before your arrival.
If you select five Nightly Upgrade Awards as a Choice Benefit, your awards will expire on December 31 of the year following the year in which you earned them. So, if you reach 50 nights in 2024 and have selected five Nightly Upgrade Awards as your Choice Benefit by February 1, 2025, your Nightly Upgrade Awards will expire on December 31, 2025.
75-Night Annual Choice Benefit Options
After you reach 75 elite nights in a calendar year, you will Earn Marriott Titanium Elite status and receive another annual Choice benefit. If you reach this threshold in 2024, here are your choices for this benefit:
- Five elite night credits
- Five Nightly Upgrade Awards
- $1,000 off mattresses
- $100 charitable donation
- Gift Marriott Gold Elite status to another member
- A free night award worth up to 40,000 points
As you can see, the choices here are largely the same as those available after hitting the 50-night threshold. I’ll leave out charitable donations, nightly upgrade awards, and mattress discounts because I’ve discussed these options in the previous section. Likewise, I won’t discuss gifting Gold Elite status because it’s relatively easy to get Marriott status via credit card.
However, let’s take a closer look at the other two options.
Earn 5 elite night credits
At the beginning of this article, I thought about how some travelers might choose five Elite Night Credits to reach Titanium Elite or Lifetime Elite status as a 50-night annual preference benefit. However, it may also make sense for Titanium Elite members to choose five Elite Night Credits to earn Ambassador Elite status. This status tier typically requires 100 elite nights and $23,000 in annual Marriott spend.
This option only makes sense if you end 2024 with five elite nights in the highest lifetime elite status tier or 95 to 99 elite nights and at least $23,000 in annual qualifying spend with Marriott.
Get up to 40,000 free night reward points
The final option, unique to the 75-night Annual Choice Benefit, is a free night award of up to 40,000 points. This free night award is worth slightly more than the 35,000-point free night award certificates associated with many Marriott Bonvoy cards.
Based on TPG’s December 2024 valuation, 40,000 Marriott points are worth $340. So, this is undoubtedly a valuable option. However, if you already have a lot of Marriott Bonvoy points and free night awards left to cover your future travel, you may want to choose another benefit.
Which Marriott Annual Choice Benefit Should You Choose?
The best Marriott Annual Choice benefit for most loyalists on the 50-night tier is five nightly upgrade awards. On the 75-night tier, the best annual choice benefit is typically five more nightly upgrade awards or a free night award of up to 40,000 points.
However, five Elite Night Credits can be a great choice if they allow you to qualify for Ambassador Elite, Titanium Elite or Lifetime status. Likewise, a $1,000 discount is your best bet if you want to buy a Marriott-brand mattress.
You might be wondering what I usually choose for my annual preferred benefits. When I earned Titanium Elite status in 2021, 2022, and 2023, I chose five Suite Night Awards (Now Nightly Upgrade Awards) a free night award of up to 40,000 points for my 50-night choice and up to 40,000 points for my 75-night choice.
However, I only earned 71 elite nights in 2024, so I plan to pick up five elite night credits as my 50-night benefit. By doing so, I would reach 76 elite nights for 2024, giving me Titanium Elite status through February 2026, and by February 1, 2025, I would have to make a 75-night selection. For a 75-night choice, I would probably choose five nightly upgrade awards so that I have these in my account when earning data points for stories. However, I believe that a free night award of up to 40,000 points would likely provide more value to me if I did not want access to the nightly upgrade awards for editorial reasons.
The bottom line
Marriott’s Annual Preferred benefits are valuable, with ample options at every threshold. The options are not of equal value, so carefully consider which benefit will be most valuable to you before making a decision.
Before concluding this article, it is also worth mentioning that Marriott Bonvoy Brilliant Card Gives similar benefits: Brilliant Earned Choice Award. Cardholders receive the Brilliant Earn Choice Award after spending $60,000 on qualifying purchases with their Bonvoy Brilliant Card in a calendar year. Brilliant Earned Choice Awards — which you must choose by February 1 of the year following the spend — include a choice of five nightly upgrade awards, a free night award of up to 85,000 points or $1,000 off any Marriott Bonvoy retail brand.