If you’re here for the referral code that gives you 2,000 extra points, it’s PM6U5V or use this registration link. If you want to know more, read on!

I have the Premium Marriott debit card for a few days and I’m very happy with it. I already got 17 Elite Night Credits and I have an unexpected shot at Titanium. But let’s start from the beginning.

The Marriott Debit cards were just introduced, in November 2025. They are a great way to boost your Marriott Bonvoy Status. We’ve talked about the Marriott Bonvoy programme in a previous article. Start there for an introduction, but long story short, you need to get to Platinum level or above to get meaningful benefits. Platinum requires staying 50 nights in a calendar year at Marriott hotels, but there are shortcuts. One shortcut was the Amex Marriott Bonvoy card. Just having the card active makes 15 nights (Elite Night Credits or ENCs) appear in your Marriott account every year. You then needed to spend only 35 nights at Marriott hotels to get to Platinum.

Marriott now introduces two Mastercard debit cards that work in addition to the Amex card. You must choose from a £55/year card that offers 10 ENCs or a £175/year card that offers 15 ENCs. There are a few other important differences, we’ll discuss them later. The important thing for now is to reach Platinum and for that you need to stay 15 or 20 nights/year at a Marriott hotel, depending on which card you choose.

But it gets even better. The Premium Debit card (£175/year) gives you one additional ENC after every £4,000 in spend (maximum 5 per year). Being a debit card, this spend includes HMRC payments for your taxes – I’ve tested this, making it the only card that offers benefits for using it to pay your taxes! See the screenshot on the right. It shows 2 ENCs unlocked and half-way progress to the third. No points are awarded for HMRC payments, and that’s expected.

With that, you only need 10 hotel nights to reach Platinum, and can start thinking about Titanium for an extra 25.

Is It Worth It?

Let’s do the math. Assuming you typically stay for 10 nights and you spend £20,000/year on the card paying your taxes, it costs you £95+£175=£270 to reach Marriott Platinum. If you don’t have taxes to pay, you’d have to consider the opportunity cost, which varies.

The Benefits

The main guaranteed benefits that come with Marriott Platinum are a welcome gift at each stay, free breakfast being the highest value, and guaranteed 4pm checkout. A typical London Marriott hotel breakfast is £30/person, adding up to £600 for 10 nights and 2 people. It’s harder to put a price on late check out – depends on the number of stays and whether you actually need it. Let’s make it £100.

The main benefits that are not guaranteed are room upgrades. There’s two kinds: upgrades at check-in and Nightly Upgrade Awards. For the former, Platinum members can get suite upgrades depending on availability and check-in staff generosity. Platinum members also have 5 Nightly Upgrade Awards (NUA) which they can use to upgrade a booking ahead of time. This tends to work well in low season and can also be applied to points bookings. The cost difference between the cheapest room and a suite upgraded with NUAs can be a few £100s per night, depending on hotel. A reasonable total for 5 nights would be £1000.

Platinum has the added benefit of 50% extra points earned for hotel stays, very roughly equivalent to 2.5% cashback on hotel spend. The Premium Debit card also offers a free night of up to a 50,000 points (see below, depends on how much you spend on the card). Both the Amex and the Debit earn points.

The bottom line is that £270 spent on the cards give you £1,700+ in benefits. Since the premise was that you’d only spend 10 nights a year at Marriott, there’s no downside of being locked-in to their hotels, which can happen if you’re chasing status.

What Else Is Included

It’s easiest to compare the cards directly on Marriott’s website. But here is the gist of it. Some of these benefits are triggered after spending a minimum amount, see the website for the full details:

• 10,000 or 30,000 Bonvoy points sign-up bonus, depending on the card. An extra 2,000 with the link in the next section.
• For the Premium Debit card, a free night worth 25,000 or 50,000 points, when you renew your membership, in other words one year after signing up and each year afterwards. You need to spend more than £5,000, respectively £9,500 in foreign currency to trigger this benefit.
• Both cards earn points, at different rates.

How to Get an Extra Bonus

You get an extra 2,000 points deposited to your account a day after you first use your card, no strings attached, if you use the code PM6U5V or this registration link.