September seems to be transfer bonus month this year. Amex is offering a dozen transfer bonuses, LifeMiles is offering bonuses when transferring Membership Rewards from one offer and from IHG and Marriott with another, Chase is offering a bonus to Avios and Capital One is doing the same to Flying Blue.
That’s not all though. United is also offering a 30% bonus when transferring points from hotel loyalty programs to your MileagePlus account, although there’s only one hotel partner worth considering for this offer.
The Deal
- Transfer hotel points to United & get 30% bonus miles.
- Direct link to offer.
Key Terms
- To qualify for this offer, members must register for the promotion between September 1, 2021 and 11:59pm EST on September 30, 2021 (“Promotional Period”).
- Qualifying activity:
- A member must earn award miles as a result of one or more points to miles conversion transactions from any combination of MileagePlus hotel partner programs that offer a points to miles transfer program that are conducted during the Promotional Period (“Qualifying Activity”) in order to qualify for MileagePlus Hotel Points-to-Miles bonus miles (“Bonus Miles”). Qualifying Activity must be completed by 11:59pm EST on September 30, 2021.
- Posting of Promotional Miles:
- At the conclusion of the promotion, all miles earned by each member from Qualifying Activity will be multiplied by 30% to determine the eligible bonus up to a maximum of 25,000 bonus miles. Bonus miles will be credited into the member’s account on or before January 31, 2022. The maximum bonus miles that can be earned by a member under this promotion is 25,000. MileagePlus will not be responsible for technical problems with partner miles postings, or failures or delays in miles postings by hotel partners, that would render any points to miles converted as ineligible under this promotion.
Quick Thoughts
The transfer ratio from most hotel programs to United isn’t great even when taking into account the 30% bonus.
The potential exception is Marriott Bonvoy. Marriott points ordinarily transfer to United on a 3:1.1 basis, with an additional 5,000 miles thrown in when transferring in chunks of 60,000 points.
My understanding is that the 5,000 bonus miles are awarded before the 3:1.1 calculation is done, so transferring 60,000 Marriott points normally gets you 27,500 MileagePlus miles. This 30% bonus promotion means that you’ll end up with a total of 35,750 miles if transferring 60,000 points. That’s not a stellar ratio, but it’s certainly not bad and so could be worth it if you can get good value when redeeming United miles.
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