United has just launched a promotion, offering a bonus when you convert hotel points into United MileagePlus miles. This is an offer we tend to see from the program once per year.
In this post:
Transfer hotel points to United with 30% bonus
For the month of October, United MileagePlus is offering a 30% bonus when you convert hotel points into airline miles. The bonus applies for transfers made between October 1 and October 31, 2024, and the percent bonus you receive depends on the number of miles you cumulatively generate:
- If you earn less than 20,000 miles, you receive a 20% bonus
- If you earn 20,000 to 40,000 miles, you receive a 25% bonus
- If you earn over 40,000 miles, you receive a 30% bonus
You can earn up to 25,000 bonus MileagePlus miles through this promotion. Registration is required prior to making a transfer, and you can earn bonus miles for any combination of MileagePlus hotel partner transfers, so it’s not just that a single transfer qualifies. Bonus miles through this promotion should post by January 31, 2025.
Eligible hotel partners include:
- Accor Live Limitless
- Choice Privileges
- IHG One Rewards
- Marriott Bonvoy
- Radisson Rewards
- Shangri-La Circle
- World of Hyatt
- Wyndham Rewards
Should you transfer hotel points to United?
Let me start by saying that generally speaking, converting any of the above points currencies into airline miles isn’t a good deal, with the exception of Marriott Bonvoy. So let’s crunch some numbers.
Marriott points ordinarily convert into airline miles at a 3:1 ratio. Thanks to a a special partnership between Marriott and United, you receive 10,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 points transfered, meaning that transferring 120,000 Bonvoy points ordinarily earns you 60,000 MileagePlus miles. Then with this offer, you’d receive a further 30% bonus, for a total of 78,000 MileagePlus miles for 120,000 Bonvoy points.
So you’re potentially looking at earning 0.65 United miles per Marriott point, which is pretty decent.
I still wouldn’t proactively transfer points, though. United miles are fairly easy to earn thanks to United’s partnership with Chase Ultimate Rewards, which allows you to earn United miles with lots of credit cards. Furthermore, there are lots of other ways to efficiently redeem on Star Alliance, including through Air Canada Aeroplan and Avianca LifeMiles.
Meanwhile it’s a lot harder to efficiently earn Marriott points.
Bottom line
United MileagePlus is offering a 30% bonus when you convert hotel points into miles, and you can earn a maximum of 25,000 MileagePlus bonus miles with this promotion.
The catch is that there are few circumstances where it’s efficient to convert hotel points into United miles. The only potentially good deal is Marriott Bonvoy, where you could convert 120,000 Bonvoy points into 78,000 MileagePlus miles, after factoring in this promotion.
Still, all things considered United miles are pretty easy to come by thanks to credit card rewards, so I probably wouldn’t take advantage of this promotion.
Does anyone plan on taking advantage of United’s 30% bonus on hotel points transfers?
The term is cheating people. If you transfer 60000 points to UA miles, you get only 10000 miles bonus, because among the 60000, 40000 is considered as transfer. But you only get 25% bonus. Only above 40000, for example, 40001 points, gets you 30% bonus. Last year, 40000 miles got 12000 bonus.
Your information is not entirely correct.
United will NOT give you 30% bonus on top of 10 000 Marriott bonus (when you transfer 60 000 Marriott point to UA miles)
That info is clearly spelled in the UA rules.
This means that is you transfer 60 000 Marriott point to UA miles, you will get
30 000 UA miles but will get only 12 000 miles as 30% hotel to miles promo.
Total is 72 000 miles not, 78 000.
I took advantage of it mainly because my mileage account is currently empty from a recent family trip to Europe . I like having miles for potential last minute upgrades .