Best marriott
 

We have enough points for a week at any Marriott. What is the nicest one? We are looking for a resort for 2 adults and 4 and 7 year old.

East coast or West coast? Summer or Winter? Do you plan on only staying at the resort, or do you want to do or see something?

More information would be helpful.

And by the way, you could use your Marriott rewards at Ritz Carlton hotels too.

The JW Marriott Orlando Grande Lakes is very nice. We stayed there last year. Orlando would be a nice place for a family vacation. It is connected to a Ritz so you could also used your Marriott points to stay there. I think the JW Marriotts are the nicest in the Marriott chain (excluding Ritz). Although I haven't stayed there, the one in Cancun looks very nice as well. Have fun choosing your vacation spot!

Marriott rates its hotels by category 1 through 7. Marriott considers category 7 to be the best.

Go to the Marriott website:
http://marriott.com/rewards/usepoints/usepoints.mi Click on Hotel Rewards Category and then view hotel in each category. I would start with category 7 and work my way down. The higher the category, the more points it will cost.

Alternatively, once you decide where you want to go, I would suggest booking at the highest category. In other words, Marriott considers a category 7 in Hawaii to be a more desirable hotel than a category 6 in Hawaii.

I just wanted to point out that category 7 in the Marriott chain does not necessarily mean the nicest of the hotels. Just the most expensive to stay at. For example, the Marriott Marquis in NY is a category 7 and the Orlando Grande Lakes is a category 6. In my opinion, the Orlando hotel is much nicer. It's just that NYC is more expensive in general and therefore gets a higher category within Marriott.

We have used points and stayed at the Marriott Stellaris in Aruba and it was a very nice hotel and we had a great time! We are using points in Kauai this spring at the Kauai Marriott in Lihue. I believe both are rated the 7 category.
I would look to see the list of category 7's and then I would see which ones were in a resort atmosphere and then decide how much plane tickets are to the desired destination!

We want the beach. We have stayed at the ones on Maui, Kaui and Big Island. Caribean would be great

The JW Marriott in Cancun is suppsoed to be very nice (check latin american board). We recently stayed in the the San Juan Marriott, which had a nice beach (but not a great beach). It's very nice, but I think there are definitely more upscale marriott.

Has anyone used points for the Marriott Vacation clubs?

There are 2 marriots in Cancun. They were both hard hit by the hurricane and I don't believe either is open now. Also, I'm not sure that the beaches have been restored yet in that part of Cancun.

The Marriott time shares are at vacationclub.com. Once you find the time share you can click on the resort and determine how many points it costs. For example, in Aruba, Marriott has a Category 7 hotel and two vacation clubs. The number of points for the clubs will depend on the number of days and the number of bedrooms.