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With the merger of Starwood and Marriott, their co-branded card programs are getting an overhaul too. On the surface, new card options are always good for our community! However, these new cards come with quite a few rules to follow.
These rules fall into a three buckets:
- You can’t get X card because you’ve held Y card within the past Z days.
- You can’t get X card because you’ve opened Y card within the past Z days.
- You can’t get X card because you’ve received a welcome bonus from Y card within the past Z months. (Chase 5/24 strikes again!)
It’s getting harder to redeem for great hotels…
Here all the rules:
- You can’t get the new American Express SPG Luxury card if:
- You’ve had the Ritz Carlton Rewards card in the past 30 days.
- You’ve acquired the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus, Marriott Rewards Premier, or Marriott Rewards Premier Business in the past 90 days.
- You’ve received a welcome bonus from the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus, Marriott Rewards Premier, or Marriott Rewards Premier Business in the past 24 months.
- You can’t get the American Express SPG personal card if:
- You’ve had the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus, Marriott Rewards Premier, Marriott Rewards, or Marriott Rewards Premier Business card in the past 30 days.
- You can’t get the American Express SPG business card if:
- You’ve had the Marriott Rewards Premier Business or Marriott Rewards Business card in the past 30 days.
- You’ve acquired the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus or Marriott Rewards Premier in the past 90 days.
- You’ve received a welcome bonus from the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus or Marriott Rewards Premier in the past 24 months.
- You can’t get the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card if:
- You’ve had the SPG personal card in the past 30 days.
- You’ve acquired the SPG Luxury or SPG Business card in the past 90 days.
- You’ve received a welcome bonus from the SPG Luxury or SPG Business card in the past 24 months.
- (Note: All recent datapoints suggest Chase 5/24 still applies to this card!)
- You can’t get the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Business card if (same exact restrictions as the personal Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card):
- You’ve had the SPG personal card in the past 30 days.
- You’ve acquired the SPG Luxury or SPG Business card in the past 90 days.
- You’ve received a welcome bonus from the SPG Luxury or SPG Business card in the past 24 months.
So which card will you open?
For me, I’ll be hanging onto my current SPG business card, and possibly closing my personal SPG card. Closing my personal card would open up the opportunity to snag a new Chase Marriott card bonus, but only the business one, as I’m nowhere near under 5/24!
Let us know which card you’ll open in the comments, and check out our credit cards page for more great offers!
Hat tip to the great write ups by Doctor of Credit and u/xkr0p on Reddit for compiling some of this information.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Last month (July), I applied for the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card and was denied due to “too many cards opened in the last 24 months” (I supposed it’s the 5/24 rule?)
Reading from above, does it mean the 5/24 rule is not applicable any more for the for the Marriott Rewards Premier Plus card as long as I did not trigger the 3 rules you named above? that I should apply again?
Hi Gigi, I updated the post to make it more clear! These are all new rules, due to the merger, in addition to existing rules. So Chase 5/24, AmEx’s once/”lifetime”, and similar rules are still in play. The Business Marriott card is not subject to 5/24 though, so you could try your luck with that one!
If I had the SPG Amex before but closed my account 6 months ago am I eligible to get the new SPG card? Or does it fall under the once in a lifetime?
Hi Kingcarp! Yes, it would still be restricted by the lifetime rule (if you’re talking about 2 personal or 2 business cards). If you mean the new Luxury card, that’s a new product line, so it wouldn’t be affected.
Are the new rules in effect already?
It looks like these new rules will officially go into affect on August 26th. Note that all the specific card issuer rules will still be at play.