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Note: This post was published on September 9, 2024. Card details and benefits may have changed since then.
Under the old Cosmopolitan casino Identity program, you were able to exchange your comps / points between the Identity and Marriott Bonvoy programs.
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Here were the charts they used:
| Identity to | Marriott |
|---|---|
| 25,000 | 20,000 |
| 10,000 | 8,000 |
| 2,500 | 2,000 |
| 500 | 400 |
| Marriott to | Identity |
|---|---|
| 250,000 | 100,000 |
| 125,000 | 50,000 |
| 25,000 | 10,000 |
| 5,000 | 2,000 |
So you lost 20% going to Marriott from Identity and you lost 80% transferring from Marriott to Identity.
Under the new MGM / Marriott tie up, you can once again exchange points.
Note that I’ll seize this opportunity to say again that I still think Marriott makes a huge mistake in only matching the invite-only MGM Noir status to a meaningful Marriott Bonvoy tier – Ambassador – while even the top tier point based MGM tier – Platinum – only matches to fairly worthless Gold with Bonvoy). That excludes MGM Platinum members from earning a tier that will drive business to Marriott – and they are proven big money gamblers.
To transfer points…
You’ll have to link your accounts first and then members will be required to convert at least 1,000 Marriott Bonvoy points or MGM Rewards points per transaction. Members can convert up to 30,000 points in a calendar year.
The ratio is 1 to 0.8 either way.
So 1,000 MGM Rewards gets you 800 Bonvoy points and 1,000 Bonvoy points gets you 800 MGM rewards points.
An MGM Rewards point (comp dollars) is simple to value. 1,000 points is worth $10.
A Bonvoy point is variable in value, but we peg the value at roughly 0.6 cents each. So 1,000 Bonvoy points is worth about $6.
Therefore, if you transfer 1,000 MGM Rewards into Bonvoy points, you go from $10 in value to roughly $4.80.
If you transfer 1,000 Bonvoy points, you go from roughly $6 to roughly $8.
Clearly, you only come out in value ahead here by transferring Bonvoy points into MGM.
However, keep in mind that MGM points expire without earning comps at their casinos for 6 months unless you have (any) status with them, in which case they won’t expire as long as you have the status.
So let’s say you earned $30 in comps on your last trip and have no status, and it’s been 5 months or so, this would be very handy to turn what would be nothing into 2,400 Bonvoy points. Much better than nothing!
And if you have lots of Bonvoy points and gamble at MGM properties, this is a nice way to get solid value from up to 30,000 points a year.
In either case, the 30,000 annual point cap keeps this from being overly exciting in either direction – but it’s a nice feature to have!
Thoughts?
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