Questions and Answers

I think I have what may be a common problem – points/miles all over the place. I have 180,000 Capital One points, 90,000 chase points, and 30,000 AA miles. My wife has 45,000 AA miles. I’m trying to figure out a way to somehow utilize all of these for our summer vacation for our family of four – destination wide open. I don’t think I can transfer to a oneworld partner and combine my existing AA miles, and I’m not sure what airline, hotel brand [I have 32,000 Bonvoy points] or partnership i can transfer both capital one and chase points to. It’s all very confusing to me. Any help would be awesome. Just found this site and it looks great!

Welcome [USER=6242]@golfingesq[/USER] – yep, that’s a common problem and many of us have been there before.

Take a look at this post from Frequent Miler: [URL]https://frequentmiler.boardingarea.com/transfer-partner-master-list/[/URL]
The post is old but is kept updated. In the post you’ll find a link to a Google Docs spreadsheet. The spreadsheet is a terrific way to show where transferrable currencies can be transferred to. So, for example, you can see that both Capital One (C1) and Chase Ultimate Rewards (UR) can be transferred to Flying Blue, the FF program for Air France/KLM. Air France is a member of SkyTeam so if you transferred points there you could use them on Delta flights domestically or any of the SkyTeam members internationally.

The biggest thing to remember is: don’t transfer any credit card points to airlines until you find the award seats you want. UR points generally transfer instantly. C1 points are instant to a lot of partners but not all. The TPG team had a post last month recounting their experience: [URL]https://thepointsguy.com/guide/capital-one-transfer-times/[/URL]

Unfortunately AA doesn’t have any transfer partners but you could still use their miles to get domestic tickets for two people and buy two other tickets. If your children are minors, you may want to work with AA directly to tie the award and paid tickets together so there are no unaccompanied minor fees/concerns.

The Bonvoy points are going to be for your Marriott hotels. According to their redemption chart ([URL]https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/pointsGridPopUp.mi[/URL]) 35K will get you one night at a category 5 hotel at the standard rate. If you can find category 1 hotels during the off-peak time, you can get 7 nights for that number of points. Summer Hull of the TPG team wrote a post a couple of years ago about 10 great places for families that are categories 1-4, so maybe that will help: [URL]https://thepointsguy.com/guide/best-marriott-category-4-hotels-for-families/[/URL]

And, your UR points can also be transferred to Hyatt so that’s another hotel chain you want to consider. Hyatt Places/Hyatt Houses are great for families as the rooms are larger, breakfast is included, there’s a separate sitting area and the Hyatt Houses even have mini-kitchens.

If this is too much info to digest at once, it’s ok. Think about it, let us know your questions and we’ll try to answer whatever we can.