Marriott Bonvoy Invite: 10,000 Extra Points Over Five Stays, and 10 Things to Know First

Marriott Bonvoy is Marriott International's loyalty programme, covering everything from Courtyard and Moxy to W, JW Marriott and The Ritz-Carlton, with plenty of participating hotels in Hong Kong. Anyone 18 or over can join for free, one account each. Book on Marriott's website or app and members get member rates, free in-room Wi-Fi and mobile check-in, and some hotels even let your phone be your room key (Marriott Bonvoy benefits).

Status goes up with the nights you stay each year: 10 nights for Silver Elite (10% more points), 25 for Gold (25% more), 50 for Platinum (50% more) and 75 for Titanium. For most people joining through a referral, what actually matters is the basic membership and the bonus points; status only starts to pay off once you're doing ten-plus Marriott nights a year.

Marriott's Reward a Friend terms spell it out: a new member who joins through an invite earns an extra 2,000 points for each paid stay, starting with the first, for up to five stays finished within 365 days of joining. That's up to 10,000 bonus points, on top of the base points each stay earns. The hotels have to be participating Marriott Bonvoy ones, and your earning preference must be points, not airline miles (Reward a Friend terms).

One more thing: stays paid with points aren't paid stays, so the nights you redeem won't earn you a 2,000-point bonus.

This is the one that trips people up: your sponsor has to be set the moment you join, and can't be added afterwards. If you join Bonvoy through the app, a hotel or a booking before the invite arrives, the referral is gone; and if you're already a member, you can't be referred at all.

Use the invite request in the offer box on this page and pop in the email address you want the invite sent to. Our editor then sends it by hand through Marriott's Reward a Friend form, so it isn't instant. Marriott emails you the invite; join through the link in that email, and whatever you do, don't open a Bonvoy account any other way while you wait. Use your own email, not someone else's.

Disclosure: the invite comes from our editor's Marriott Bonvoy account, so for each of your first five paid stays Marriott gives us 2,000 points too. Marriott caps each member at five referrals a year; whoever invites you, your side is the same 2,000 points per stay. We only use your email to send the invite.

Most brands give 10 base points per US dollar of qualifying spend; Residence Inn, Element, TownePlace Suites, Protea, Four Points Flex, City Express, Apartments by Marriott Bonvoy, Marriott Executive Apartments and Homes & Villas give 5, and StudioRes gives 4. HK dollar charges are converted to US dollars at a rate Marriott picks, which may not match your bill (Program Rules). Qualifying spend is the room rate plus eligible extras charged to the room, like meals; taxes, service charges, resort fees, parking and tips earn nothing, and that includes the 10% service charge Hong Kong hotels usually add.

Give your membership number when you book or check in. Rooms booked through a travel agent or online travel platforms like Expedia, Booking.com, Hotwire or Priceline, group rates you don't pay the hotel for yourself, packages and wholesale rates, free rooms and vouchers are all non-qualifying: no points and no member perks.

A stay means consecutive nights at the same hotel, however you check in and out. Five nights at one hotel is one stay and earns 2,000 points; one night each at five hotels, or five separate trips to the same one, earns 10,000. So a three-night staycation still counts once, and to collect the lot you need five separate stays.

Example: five separate two-night stays at a HK$1,200 nightly room rate (before service charge and taxes), booked direct at brands giving 10 points per US dollar. Each HK$2,400 room bill is about US$306 at the European Central Bank's rate on 23 October 2026 (about HK$7.84 per US$1), so roughly 3,060 base points plus 2,000 bonus. Over five stays that's about 15,300 base points and 10,000 bonus points, some 25,300 in total.

Remember the 365 days start on the day you join, not the day you get the invite, so the safest move is to join just before your first stay.

Marriott publishes just one fixed rate: Homes & Villas rentals cost 178.57 points per US dollar. On that basis the 10,000 bonus points are worth about US$56 (roughly HK$439) and all 25,300 points about US$142 (roughly HK$1,111). Marriott normally sells points at US$12.50 per 1,000, so buying the same amount would cost US$125 (roughly HK$980); take them when they're free, but they're not worth buying at that price (Program Rules).

Hotel award nights have no fixed chart; the points needed change with the date and the hotel, so compare with the cash price before redeeming. The example above comes to about HK$13,200 with the 10% service charge, so the bonus is worth around 3.3%: a sweetener on trips you're already taking, not a reason to book more.

Points can go on hotel nights, Homes & Villas rentals and other rewards, or be converted to airline miles. Redeem five nights in a row and the cheapest night is free (Marriott calls it Stay for 5, Pay for 4), so longer redemptions go further. As long as your account has qualifying activity, like a stay or earning or spending points, at least once every 24 months, your points stay alive; go 24 months with nothing and the lot is forfeited for good.

If a stay's points don't show up, Marriott accepts missing-credit requests up to a year afterwards, so hang on to your booking confirmations and bills. New members can also claim points for eligible stays in the 30 days before joining, but the Reward a Friend bonus only covers stays in the 365 days after you join (Program Rules).

On 24 October 2026 the Marriott Bonvoy app had 4.8 on the Hong Kong App Store (26,563 ratings) and 4.7 on Google Play in Hong Kong (558,707 ratings worldwide). Great scores, but the low reviews keep saying the same things: endless password resets, a struggle to reach a real person, errors when spending points on the shopping site, older devices that can't update to iOS 18 being locked out of the app, and promo bonus points not showing up. Screenshot the rate terms before you book, and after every stay check your points and the 2,000 bonus have landed.

On privacy: you have to be 18 or over, it's one account each, and your details go to Marriott. In October 2020 the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined Marriott £18.4 million over the breach of the Starwood guest reservation database, which affected around 339 million guest records worldwide (ICO penalty notice). To leave, send written notice to Marriott Bonvoy Member Support; the moment you cancel, unused points, awards and status vanish, so spend your points first.

If you don't have a Bonvoy account yet and you'll have a few separate paid stays booked direct with Marriott in the next year, say staycations, work trips or holidays, join through the invite. Five stays like that add 10,000 points without spending an extra dollar.

If you already have an account, usually book hotels through comparison or package platforms, your Marriott stays would be one long trip, or you'd be skipping a cheaper hotel just for points, don't bother. The full bonus is worth about HK$439, and a cheaper room elsewhere often wins.