Get Airline Miles using Your Hotel Points (2021)
Easily Earn Points for Free Travel, Using Your Points for Free Travel
Almost all hotel reward programs allow you to convert your hotel points to frequent flyer miles. However, given the poor conversion rates, this is rarely a good deal.
You will usually get much more value from your hotel points by using them for free hotel nights, rather than a handful of frequent flyer miles.
The main exception are Marriott points, where converting to airline miles provides very good value for your points, but usually still not as much as you can get by using them for hotel rooms (unless you are getting and highly value business and first class tickets).
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One of the best uses of Marriott points is to transfer them to airline miles
Unlike most other hotel-based loyalty points, you will get good value when you transfer your Marriott points to one of dozens of different frequent flyer programs. Using Marriott Points for Airline Tickets.
For every 3 Marriott points you transfer, you get 1 mile. You'll receive a 25% bonus, if you transfer a block of 60,000 points (25,000 miles instead of 20,000 miles).
At a typical value of .7 cents per point, you are acquiring airline miles at 2.1 cents each (1.68 cents with the bonus). That makes it worthwhile for flights which have good redemption values.
Compared to the other transferable credit card point programs, like Ultimate Rewards and Membership Rewards, Marriott has many more frequent flyer partners. This lets you take advantage of award flights on more airlines and redemption sweet spots with more programs.
However, because Marriott points can take a long time to transfer, it can be risky using your points. Any award space may disappear before your points make it into the desired program. And once your points have been transferred, you can't transfer them back again.
You’ll get poor value by transferring other hotel points to airline miles
Redeeming other hotel points to get airline miles isn’t the best way to use those points. However, if you just need a few more miles to redeem an airline award and you don’t have any transferable credit card points you can use, it could worthwhile to transfer small amounts of points from your hotel programs.
Because of the lousy exchange rates, most hotel programs have many different willing airline partners. It isn’t hard to find available transfer partners, it just requires a lot of points.
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IHG. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .5 cents per IHG point, you are acquiring airline miles at 2.5 cents per mile. |
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Hilton. The normal rates for Hilton transfers are 1,000 miles per 10,000 points for the more expensive partners and 1,500 miles per 10,000 points for the less expensive partners. At .45 cents per Hilton point, this works out to around 4.5 or 3.35 cents per mile, depending on the airline. |
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Hyatt. Normal rate is 4,000 miles for every 10,00 points. At a value of 1.7 cents per Hyatt point, you are acquiring miles at a rate of about 4.25 cents per mile. Even with the bonus 5,000 miles you’d get for transferring 50,000 points, this isn’t a very good deal. |
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Best Western. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .6 cents per Best Western point, you are acquiring miles at 3 cents each. |
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Choice. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .75 cents per Choice point, you are acquiring miles at about 3.75 cents each. However, when you transfer to Southwest, you’ll get 3,000 miles instead, working out to about 2.5 cents per mile. |
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Wyndham. Normal rate is 2,000 miles for 10,000 points. At a value of .8 cents per Wyndham point, you are acquiring miles at about 4 cents each. |
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Radisson. Normal rate is 1,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .4 cents per Radisson Reward point, you are acquiring miles at about 4 cents each. |
