Compare Marriott rates plus 2.7% cash-back on bookings

Two big (and tightly integrated) announcements out today about my Wandering Aramean Travel Tools site and some new resources added related to Marriott hotel searches.

First up, I’ve finally received the necessary approvals to add Marriott to the cash-back travel rebates portal on the site. And, best as I can figure searching evreward.com, I’ve got the second highest cash-back rate available at 2.7% (Shop Discover claims 5% there and FatWallet seems to have 5% now though it isn’t clear how long for). Yup…higher payouts than ebates. And even higher (10% extra – 2.97% total) if you’re a First Class member. There are some exceptions to where cash-back can be earned based on what they pay out on. The following are excluded from earning the rebates:

• Rooms offered at specially negotiated rates, where the customer is required to be affiliated with or employed by a particular company or organization to receive the special rate (e.g., corporate rate, government rate or the Marriott employee rate).
• Rooms offered at specially negotiated rates for Marriott Rewards members (e.g. Rewards offer discount, Rewards offer package).
• Rooms that are booked or upgraded and paid for using redeemed Marriott Rewards Points.
• Rooms booked at non-commissionable brands (Ritz Carlton, ExecuStay, BVLGARI, Grand Residences).
• Rooms booked at non-commissionable properties (The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, Autograph Collection, Riyadh Marriott, Saudi Arabia, Aspen Wye River Conference Center (Maryland), The Marriott Ranch Bed and Breakfast (Virginia), AC Hotel Lisboa, AC Hotel Carlton Madrid, AC Hotel Som, AC Hotel Nuevo Portil Golf).

So, that’s all well and good, but I rarely like to stop at the base level when I see larger opportunities available. The Marriott page is good for simple searches but if you’re interested in comparing corporate codes to regular rates and points rates that’s not easily done. Also, they limit the results per page too low for me. I decided to make some improvements on those “bugs.”

Load up the new Marriott Rate Comparison tool and fill in your search parameters:

Then let it go and check out the results:

You can easily filter out brands on the results page (just un-check them by clicking on the orange button) and also sort by price or points.

And, as an added bonus, clicking through to book will take you direct to the Marriott website and you will earn the same 2.7% cash-back in the travel rebates program as you otherwise would.

Everyone gets to add a corporate code to the search results but First Class members get a bit more: List up to three codes (separated by commas) and all the rates will be returned in a single search view:

A couple quirks to be aware of (that I know of so far):

• If there are blanks in one column the sort might not work so great
• The cash rates are per night while the points rate is per stay
• All the cpp calculations are based on the assumption that the stay is pricing in USD. If priced in euros then the cpp will be in euro cents. If in some other currency it is that currency * 100. I’m not inclined to code currency conversion so don’t expect that to change

Other than that the testing has been pretty successful so far. Of course, I have no doubt that y’all will find some bugs for me to fix but, well, that comes with free tools sometimes.

Let me know what you think.