In addition to the 20% transfer bonus to Air France/KLM Flying Blue, American Express launched a second transfer bonus today. This other bonus has a higher percentage of 30%, but the fact that it’s only to Marriott Bonvoy means it can largely be ignored.
The Deal
- Get a 30% bonus when transferring American Express Membership Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy.
Key Terms
- Expires November 30, 2025.
Quick Thoughts
This new transfer bonus will be around for a full two months, so there’s no reason to rush to transfer points over right now.
That said, there’s very little reason to transfer points over anyway. We have the Reasonable Redemption Value of Marriott points listed at 0.76 cents per point. With a 30% transfer bonus, that means you’d still expect to reasonably get less than 1 cent per point of value from your transferred Membership Rewards which is a poor trade-off.
There are no doubt some high value Marriott Bonvoy awards where it might be worth transferring your points over, or if you just need to top up your account with a small number of points in order to book a stay. However, with Marriott frequently selling its points for ~0.85 cents per point, it’s hard to make much of a case for utilizing this transfer bonus.
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AMEX needs to get with the program on hotel transfers.
Wells Fargo and Citi transfer to Choice at 1:2
Citi transfers to iPrefer at 1:4
Citi transfers to Accor at 2:1
Chase transfers to Hyatt at 1:1
All of these are far better than anything AMEX offers.
Not to mention you can’t even use points as cash at $0.01 each in their portal unless you’re booking FHR.
This would approach marginally interesting if they doubled the regular transfer rate then gave an extra 30% transfer bonus on top. 1 MR = 2.6 MB would put 5 nights at the StR Vommuli at 217,693 MR. This seems much fairer, steep enough to manage capacity but not outlandish. I wish they would consider matching hilton’s transfer ratio!
Even at that rate transferring to Marriott would only be marginally OK at most properties.
Agreed – it shows how terrible they’ve set it up as an option.
No, it wouldn’t even come close, unless you are going off peak, like summer or something. 5 nights now is 880,000 points. Sad. Did 5 nights in 2023 for 360k. Earlier this year, 480k. Was going to do 2026, but nah. Just too much. At this rate, by 2028, it’ll be 350k per night.