From acquiring Starwood Preferred Guest to overhauling the award chart for free nights, the Marriott Bonvoy program has changed in recent years.

If you've collected points with this hotel loyalty program, whether through work travel or through credit card spending, you might be wondering how to redeem them. The most obvious way is for free hotel nights, but there are other options for how to use Marriott points.

How to use Marriott points for free nights

As a Marriott Bonvoy member, you can redeem your Marriott points for free nights at 30 different brands, including but not limited to:

Autograph Collection Hotels.

Delta Hotels.

JW Marriott.

Marriott.

The Ritz-Carlton.

W Hotels.

Westin.

Marriott’s more than 7,000 properties are split into eight award categories, each requiring a certain number of Bonvoy points per night. The higher the hotel category, the more points you need for an award night.

Each category offers off-peak, peak and standard rates so you can easily find the hotel that best fits your point spending needs. From 5,000 to 100,000 points per night, you can find the rate that's right for you.

For example, say you’re going to Paris and want to redeem Marriott points for free nights.

Go to marriott.com, log in to your Bonvoy account, enter Paris in the search box, your preferred dates of travel, the number of rooms and the number of guests per room. Check the Use Points/Certificates box and click the Find Hotels button.

The search tool will bring up all the hotels available in your selected area. Each lists a hotel category, so you can expect how many points you have to redeem per night, and the total number of points required for the length of your stay.

Once you pick your preferred property, select View Rates. On the next page, you’ll find the rooms available with points.

If you want to pay for some of your nights with points and for some with cash, click on Customize Payments and select your cash-and-points combination. This is useful if you have enough points for just one or two nights and want to stay longer, so you can mix your payments on a single booking.