5.5.24
In award travel, it is most beneficial to collect and earn transferrable points in order to maximize value and flexibility when looking for award flights and hotels. By earning points that can transfer to many partners instead of JUST earning United miles or JUST earning Marriott points, you have the ability to use said points in different ways, allowing you the opportunity to strike when a good deal presents itself.
This concept is never more obvious than during bank transfer bonuses.
What are Transfer Bonuses?
Flexible, transferrable points, such as Chase Ultimate Rewards, Amex Membership Rewards, Capital One miles, and Citi Thank You Points have the versatility to be used at several partners, per the chart below.
And from time to time, those banks offer bonuses as an incentive to move points into a specific hotel or airlines program and get "bonus" points in the process. It is fairly straight forward. If a bank has a 30% transfer bonus, and you needed 100,000 points total, you could transfer 77,000 points and end up with 100K (77K x 1.30= 100K). This gives you a 23% rebate on your award booking. The percent bonus and programs participating vary, but if you can take advantage of a bonus, it makes your award redemption that much more valuable.
Current Transfer Bonuses
May 2024 is seeing a plentitude of transfer bonuses, as below:
Transfer From | Transfer To | End Date |
Chase Ultimate Rewards | 30% to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | 6/15/24 |
Chase Ultimate Rewards | 40% to Marriott Bonvoy | 6/15/24 |
Amex Membership Rewards | 30% to Virgin Atlantic Flying Club | 5/31/24 |
Amex Membership Rewards | 20% to Aeromexico ClubPremier | 5/31/24 |
Citi Thank You Points | 50% to Accor Live Limitless | 5/11/24 |
Citi Thank You Points | 30% to Qatar Privilege Club Avios | 5/31/24 |
Examples
Not all transfer bonuses are alike, so let's look at each one to give examples of how you can get better value by utilizing these bonuses. I will look at these starting with what I believe to be the most practical use.
Virgin Atlantic
Virgin Atlantic is a UK based airline, but I will highlight ways to use Virgin miles to fly other airlines. Read here for understanding airline alliances. Chase and Amex are offering a 30% bonus to Virgin, so either/both currencies can be used.
This economy Delta flight from Atlanta (ATL) to London (LHR) costs 12,500 Virgin Atlantic miles and $217. It would only require 10,000 with the 30% transfer bonus. Remember, 10K x 1.3 gives you 13K Virgin miles, enough to cover this flight.
The same flight would be 155,000 miles and $6 if booking through Delta.
Although the fees are higher through Virgin, this shows the HUGE discrepancy in miles when booking with partner airlines and how this transfer bonus sweetens the deal.
One more example involves Japan based All Nippon Airways (ANA). Although ANA is in Star Alliance and Virgin is in Skyteam, the 2 airlines have a unique partnership. Virgin's award chart for flying from Japan to the USA on ANA airlines is below, priced as round trip:
The process for booking these flights is complex, but for this exercise we will compare booking an ANA business flight through United (Star Alliance partner) to the above Virgin award.
This one way Chicago-Tokyo ANA flight would be 110K United miles in business class
We know from the chart above that Japan to central US would be 47,500 Virgin Atlantic miles one way (95K for roundtrip divided by 2) and with the 30% bonus, only 37K miles. What a difference from the 110K United is charging. 37K miles to fly 13 hours in business class across the Pacific, not bad.
Qatar
Qatar Airlines, based in Doha, shares its frequent flyer currency (Avios) with British Airways, Aer Lingus, Iberia, and Finnair. Points earned with one program can be moved around to the others. So this transfer bonus is like unlocking the bonus not just for Qatar, but for all the Avios partners.
Here is a flight on American Airlines booked with Qatar Avios. American miles can only be earned by transferring from Bilt Rewards, and that is ending in June. Thus, booking American flights can often be easiest through a One world partner such as Qatar. In this example, Philadelphia (PHL) to Turks and Caicos (PLS) is only 11,000 Qatar Avios, or 9,000 with the 30% bonus.
Marriott
Although transferring flexible points to Marriott typically isn't a good idea (because you can get much better value for those points as seen above), there may be select cases where this 40% transfer bonus from Chase makes sense. For example, if you wanted to take your family to Disney this fall and stay on property, this room at the Swan Reserve is $500/night with tax or 45000 points. With the bonus it would only be 33,000 points, not a bad redemption to offset $500 at 1.5 cents/point.
But considering you could use a mere 4,000 points more above (37K to fly ANA) for a roughly $5,000 business class flight, you can see the huge value disparity. However, not everyone realistically plans to fly to Japan, so saving money on an already expensive family Disney trip is a huge win.
Using this Marriott bonus will be very circumstance specific, so crunch the numbers on a hotel you are looking at before transferring.
AeroMexico
This program has limited use for those living in the US, but the biggest draw is that Amex to Aeromexico typically transfers 1:1.6, so with the bonus it become 1:1.92. This ability to almost double your points transferred opens up some possibilities. Take, for example, this AeroMexico flight from Chicago (ORD) to Lima, Peru (LIM) connecting in Mexico City.
It costs 52,300 points in economy and 132,900 in business. On the surface that sounds high, but with the bonus from Amex it becomes 27,239 (transfer 28K) in econ and 69,219 (transfer 70K) in business. Those numbers are pretty good for over 10 hours flying to South America, a destination often difficult to find decent award flights to.
Accor Live Limitless
This would be a very niche use of the bonus. Accor has hotels outside the US and largely in Europe. Typically, Citi Thank You Points transfer 2 to 1 to Accor, but with the bonus, it becomes 2:1.5. You can redeem 2,000 Accor points for 40 euros off your hotel bill. So this hotel in Copenhagen that costs 274 euros would require 14,000 Accor points.
280 euros divided by 40 euros is 7 of the 2,000 point units.
7 units x 2000 = 14,000 points.
To get those 14,000 Accor points, you would have to transfer 19,000 from Citi at 2:1.5. So you end up with above 1.5 cents/point value here:
$290 US dollars/ 19,000 Citi points.
Conclusion
I used mostly examples for international travel to highlight the value, but note these programs, especially Virgin Atlantic and Marriott, can be helpful in booking domestic travel as well.
I hope you see by now the superiority of transferrable points versus fixed, program specific points and miles. Not only can you decide which program you want to use them in, but you also have the leverage to strike when a transfer bonus arises. If you had points in the currencies described above (Chase, Amex, Citi) you could partake in any or all of the bonuses currently active if it suited your travel needs. And when you do, by earning the bonus, already free or heavily reduced award travel becomes that much more valuable, thanks to the fewer points needed to book.