Last week, I covered how MGM Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy had launched their mutual point transfer feature (a mere six months after their partnership first rolled out). Well, now another Marriott Bonvoy pact is gaining a point conversion feature — and it’s definitely not one I expected. Now, you can elect to turn your Marriott Bonvoy into Starbucks Rewards Stars.
Before I get into the specifics of this offer, let me quickly cover the Starbucks Stars program. When you use a registered gift card at Starbucks, you can earn 2 Stars per $1 spent. Alternatively, you can use any credit card via the Starbucks app in order to earn 1 star per $1. Then, these earned Stars can be redeemed for certain purchases:
- 100 Stars: Bakery item, hot or iced brewed coffee, hot or iced brewed tea, packaged snack, etc.
- 200 Stars: Any handcrafted beverage, any hot breakfast item
- 300 Stars: Packaged salad, lunch sandwich, packaged protein box, packaged coffee item (such as whole bean coffee)
With that context, let’s get back to the Marriott of it all. As mentioned, you can now link your Marriott Bonvoy and Starbucks Rewards accounts in order to convert Bonvoy points to Starbucks Stars. Specifically, 1,000 Marriott Bonvoy Points can be redeemed for 100 Stars.
So is that a good deal? In short… probably not. To understand why, let’s look back at my recent MGM transfer. In that case, I started with 2,700 MGM Rewards points that were worth $27. Since those points convert at 1:0.8, the result was 2,160 Marriott Bonvoy Points. If I were to now send the majority of those points to Starbucks, I’d earn 200 Stars — which would be enough for 1 free latte or other handcrafted beverage. Unless I did some crazy amount of customizations, I’m not getting anywhere near the $20 or so in value I should be seeing. Heck, even with what I believe to be the best Starbucks Rewards deal (whole bean coffee), the 200 Stars would only get me two-thirds of the way to the Stars I’d need for my $20 bag of coffee.
Unfortunately, while I do find the concept of converting hotel points into Starbucks coffee intriguing, the math shows that this is likely not worth it for most. Then again, that seems to be par for the course as I wasn’t terribly impressed with the other details of the Marriott-Starbucks partnership to begin with. Still, if you happen to have some Bonvoy points to burn — or even want to turn MGM Rewards into Starbucks Stars with a Marriott in the middle — then at least you have that option.