Among hotel loyalty programs, one thing that makes Marriott Bonvoy points unique is the ability to (fairly) efficiently convert them into airline miles. While most major hotel loyalty programs allow some sort of opportunity to convert hotel points into airline miles, it typically represents a very bad value.
In this post I wanted to take a look at the opportunity to convert Marriott points into airline miles, and whether it’s worth it.
In this post:
Basics of Marriott’s points to miles transfer option
It’s possible to convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles, with your choice of 38 different frequent flyer programs. Let’s take a look at which partners Marriott Bonvoy has, what the transfer ratios are, etc.
Marriott Bonvoy points to airline miles transfer ratio
Marriott Bonvoy points generally convert into airline miles at a 3:1 ratio, and with most partners you get 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points you transfer.
In other words, 60,000 Bonvoy points will convert into 25,000 airline miles (including the 5,000 bonus miles). You can take advantage of that bonus of 5,000 miles multiple times, meaning that you can convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles at a ratio of up to 2.4:1.
Note that you can transfer a minimum of 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy points and a maximum of 240,000 Marriott Bonvoy points per day. So if you want to transfer more than 240,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, you’ll want to do so over multiple days.
Marriott Bonvoy’s airline mileage transfer partners
Here are the 38 airline frequent flyer programs you can transfer your Marriott Bonvoy points to:
- Aegean Miles+Bonus
- Aer Lingus AerClub
- Aeromexico Club Premier
- Air Canada Aeroplan
- Air China PhoenixMiles
- Air France-KLM Flying Blue
- Air New Zealand Airpoints
- Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan
- American Airlines AAdvantage
- ANA Mileage Club
- Asiana Airlines Asiana Club
- Avianca lifemiles
- British Airways Executive Club
- Cathay Pacific Asia Miles
- China Southern Sky Pearl Club
- Copa Airlines ConnectMiles
- Delta SkyMiles
- Emirates Skywards
- Etihad Guest
- Frontier Miles
- Hainan Airlines Fortune Wings Club
- Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles
- Iberia Plus
- InterMiles
- Japan Airlines Mileage Bank
- LATAM Pass
- Qantas Frequent Flyer
- Qatar Airways Privilege Club
- Saudia Alfursan
- Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
- Southwest Airlines Rapid Rewards
- TAP Air Portugal Miles&Go
- Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus
- Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles
- United Airlines MileagePlus
- Virgin Atlantic Flying Club
- Virgin Australia Velocity Frequent Flyer
- Vueling Club
Note that there’s one exception to the 3:1 transfer ratio, which is that Marriott Bonvoy points transfer to Air New Zealand Airpoints at a 200:1 ratio. This simply reflects the different scale of Air New Zealand’s rewards currency.
There are also several exceptions to the 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points transfered:
- For transfers to American AAdvantage, avianca lifemiles, and Delta SkyMiles, you don’t receive 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points transfered, so the ratio is 3:1 regardless of how big your transfer is
- For transfers to United MileagePlus, you actually receive 10,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 Bonvoy points transfered, meaning the transfer ratio in the right increments can be 2:1 (this is thanks to a special partnership between the two brands)
Marriott Bonvoy airline mileage transfers aren’t instant
With the major transferable points currencies, converting points into airline miles is typically an instant process. So it’s worth being aware that Marriott Bonvoy points don’t convert into airline miles instantly. Rather, transfers generally take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks.
I’d consider this to be a major weak point of this opportunity. I generally recommend converting points into airline miles in situations where you have a specific use in mind, and that could be a situation where you find award space on a particular flight.
Obviously that’s not exactly useful here, since it could take a couple of weeks for the transfer to happen, and odds are that whatever award availability you were looking at will be gone at that point.
Are Marriott Bonvoy mileage transfers worth it?
While I think converting Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles could represent a good value, it’s not how I choose to redeem my Bonvoy points.
To briefly crunch some numbers, I value Bonvoy points at 0.7 cents each. At a 2.4:1 transfer ratio (60,000 points per 25,000 miles), that’s like “paying” 1.68 cents per airline mile, which is a pretty decent cost.
Why do I choose not to convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles?
- Marriott Bonvoy points can’t efficiently be earned through credit card spending, so your only options to earn them efficiently are through hotel stays, or by buying Bonvoy points (typically at a higher cost than what I value them)
- I earn transferable points currencies for my credit card spending, so I’d rather use points earned with Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One, Chase Ultimate Rewards, or Citi ThankYou, for flights, since I can earn those points at a faster rate with credit card spending
- I’d rather use my Marriott Bonvoy points for luxury hotel stays, where there’s outsized value with the points
- In theory the one situation where it could make sense to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to airline miles is for programs that don’t otherwise partner with the major transferable points currencies; however, even there I don’t think it’s terribly compelling
I absolutely don’t think anyone is off base for choosing to convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles. However, it’s not how I choose to redeem my points, and I don’t think the value is there for most.
It’s more of a last resort redemption option, if you’re truly unable to get value elsewhere. In fairness, that might just be the direction the program is headed. While Bonvoy points have been significantly devalued over the years for hotel redemptions, the mileage conversion options have remained mostly consistent.
What about converting airline miles into Marriott points?
While the ability to convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles has been around for a long time, we’re increasingly seeing two-way transfers, where you can convert airline miles into Marriott Bonvoy points.
The idea behind this is great — maybe someone has a lot of airline miles, but really wants to redeem for a hotel stay. Is this a good deal, though? Unfortunately the answer is almost always “no.”
Currently the following programs let you convert airline miles to Marriott Bonvoy at the following ratios:
- Convert Air Canada Aeroplan points to Marriott Bonvoy at a 1:1 ratio
- Convert All Nippon Airways Mileage Club miles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 1:1 ratio
- Convert United MileagePlus miles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 1:1 ratio
- Convert Japan Airlines Mileage Bank miles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 4:3 ratio
- Convert Cathay Pacific miles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 2:1 ratio
- Convert Hawaiian Airlines HawaiianMiles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 2:1 ratio
- Convert Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios to Marriott Bonvoy at a 2:1 ratio
- Convert Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles to Marriott Bonvoy at a 2:1 ratio
While I suppose more flexibility is always a good thing, these transfers are almost never worth it. As a reminder, I value Bonvoy points at 0.7 cents each, and you’re getting at most one Bonvoy point per airline mile.
If you have the same valuation I do, at a 1:1 transfer ratio you’re getting up to 0.7 cents per mile, while at a 2:1 transfer ratio, you’re getting up to 0.35 cents per mile. That’s not a rate at which I’d be happy cashing in miles.
Bottom line
It’s possible to convert Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles with over three dozen programs. While this is the best hotel points to airline miles transfer ratio that you’ll find with any program, it’s still not how I’d choose to redeem my Bonvoy points.
Yes, I appreciate the “insurance” that this redemption option provides, since it essentially creates a floor value for Bonvoy points. However, Bonvoy points are hard to efficiently earn through anything other than hotel stays, so I prefer to save them for hotel stays. I’d rather convert credit card points currencies into airline miles.
Where do you stand on the value of Marriott Bonvoy airline mileage transfers? Have you ever redeemed Bonvoy points this way?
I have some Frontier miles I need to keep alive and use e-rewards, but Marriott transfer is my back up.
The real story here is that Marriott took a market leading program perk from Starwood and has let it die on the vine. This was really innovative at one time but has been made obsolete by the banks improving their transfer programs iteratively. The fact that they’ve removed the bonus for their most popular partners tells you everything you need to know. This is Yahoo Mail/MySpace levels of falling asleep at the wheel.
The problem with your post here is that you assume Marriott didn't devalue these transfers intentionally - which they obviously did. These transfers were from a time before Chase/Amex/CapitalOne/etc allowed for 1x1 transfers to a wide variety of airlines. From a Marriott perspective, they would surely rather people redeem these points at their hotels as they can also generate additional spend, keep owners happy (depending on the redemption payout), etc. So no "falling asleep at...
The problem with your post here is that you assume Marriott didn't devalue these transfers intentionally - which they obviously did. These transfers were from a time before Chase/Amex/CapitalOne/etc allowed for 1x1 transfers to a wide variety of airlines. From a Marriott perspective, they would surely rather people redeem these points at their hotels as they can also generate additional spend, keep owners happy (depending on the redemption payout), etc. So no "falling asleep at the wheel" here...
"From a Marriott perspective, they would surely rather people redeem these points at their hotels"
Bingo. It's an incentive thing, not incompetence.
@Redacted: it was incompetence, pure and simple, with no incentive whatsoever if one understood what was going. Thus, both @stvr's and your comments are totally wrong and @Anthony's is closer to the truth: Marriott devalued the transfers to miles intentionally because those transfers under SPG were a boneheaded concept that contributed to the demise of Starwood.
There was not a single upside to the transfers that SPG...
@Redacted: it was incompetence, pure and simple, with no incentive whatsoever if one understood what was going. Thus, both @stvr's and your comments are totally wrong and @Anthony's is closer to the truth: Marriott devalued the transfers to miles intentionally because those transfers under SPG were a boneheaded concept that contributed to the demise of Starwood.
There was not a single upside to the transfers that SPG had made so favorable that the starpoint became more popular as a currency for redeeming for airline award seats than for hotel award rooms. The transfers incentivized people to earn tons of starpoints on the SPG AMEX without ever setting foot in Starwood hotels, and then transferred those points to airline miles for redeeming for award tickets. The end result was that Starwood hotels were completely taken out of the loop, either for earning starpoints on revenue stays or redeeming them for award rooms! Thus, a program that was supposed to be Starwood's "cash cow" became an "albatross" that contributed the chain's financial difficulties that led to its demise. That the transfers were a boneheaded idea was not hard to figure out at all because I'd written about them as I just did able long before Marriott decided to cripple them. In fact, that is why one of Marriott's very first acts after acquiring Starwood was to severely cripple the points transfers.
It is customary for former SPG loyalists to write glowingly of the program, but the truth of the matter is that SPG was a weak, subpar program that self-anointed "travel gurus" inexplicably place on a pedestal that it never deserved, as its demise ultimately made clear.
An underrated feature of the Marriott transfer-to-miles benefit is that you can transfer a precise amount of miles versus transferring in 1,000 increments (though your transfer has to start at 3,000 Marriott points I believe).
Exactly! I had some SQ points expiring and needed a few (2500?) more for a useful redemption. All the other sources I could transfer from demand multiples of 2000 or 1000, so I'd be wasting a large proportion of my transfer.
I transferred exactly the number of Marriott points needed and exactly zeroed out my SQ balance when I redeemed.
Many banks are getting better at that, though. BILT and WF Autograph let you do smaller increments... pretty sure CapOne does too. Really it's just Amex and Chase insisting on 1000s.
I had some orphaned points at Singapore that were about to expire and saved them via a transfer to Marriott. As for Marriott to airlines, if you're targeting a 6cpp Emirates redemption, the math works out to 2.5 cents per Marriott point. Hard to get that kind of value with a Marriott redemption.
Personally, I convert Marriott points to airline miles from time to time (typically to programs which I can't, or couldn't (e.g. Alaska's Mileage Plan before it becomes a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards), transfer from other transferrable currencies into. I agree that Marriott points are much more difficult to accumulate, but I do have a very healthy balance, and don't I find enough hotel redemption opportunities that make financial sense based on my own valuation...
Personally, I convert Marriott points to airline miles from time to time (typically to programs which I can't, or couldn't (e.g. Alaska's Mileage Plan before it becomes a transfer partner of Bilt Rewards), transfer from other transferrable currencies into. I agree that Marriott points are much more difficult to accumulate, but I do have a very healthy balance, and don't I find enough hotel redemption opportunities that make financial sense based on my own valuation methodology.
Is the section "What about converting Marriott Bonvoy points into airline miles" mistitled? The content of that section is really about converting airline miles into Marriott points.
@ Tony -- Whoops, indeed, thank you! Fixed.