How to accrue 60 nights annually via Marriott credit cards only

(Warning: I must admit first that this is a clickbait, as although practically possible very few people qualify for all the credit cards required 😉)

Marriott issues co-branded credit cards in many markets including the US and UK, and one major perk of them is elite night credits which is awarded annually to accelerate your membership tier upgrade process. Usually such credits are not stackable across multiple cards, but there are rare combinations that work.

Up until recently, the maximum annual credits you can possibly accrue was 30 nights, by holding:

• A Marriott personal card (15 nights), e.g. Amex UK, Amex US or Chase US, and
• An Amex US Marriott business card (15 nights)

You can only stack one personal card with one business card, otherwise having two personal cards (e.g. Amex US & UK) only yields 15 night credits.

There was an Amex SPG card in Japan which offered another stackable 5 nights, but that card has been re-branded to give 15 nights instead which no longer works.

There has been a very recent development though. Citic Bank just started issuing the first Marriott co-branded credit cards in China this week. It comes with three versions that offer 5, 10 and 15 elite night credits respectively.

Terms say that you can only apply for one of the three cards, and the night credits don’t stack with credit cards issued by other banks. However in reality it works slightly differently: people have reported to be able to submit three applications, and whilst they are all pending, all night credits have already hit the Marriott account – and that’s on top of what’s offered by other banks.

Sorry that I don’t have a screenshot in English, but this is from someone who’s just applied for all three cards and he’s already had the US Marriott Amex card. The four cards have deposited a total of 45 nights into his account.

This could well be an error (especially as those credit applications aren’t even approved yet) and will possibly be fixed soon. But in theory, at the moment you can harvest 60 night credits for this year which gives you Platinum status straightaway, if you are eligible for credit applications in both US and China of course.