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American Express is offering card members a 30% bonus when transferring from Membership Rewards to Marriott Bonvoy. With the 30% bonus, 1,000 Membership Rewards points will result in 1,300 Marriott Bonvoy points.
The Deal
- 30% transfer bonus when transferring Amex Membership Rewards points to Marriott Bonvoy.
- I believe this offer is open to everyone with Membership Rewards points, but please let us know if the offer doesn’t appear on your account.
Key Terms
- Expires 10/31/2019.
- Must transfer in 1,000 point increments
Quick Thoughts
Even with the transfer bonus, I wouldn’t recommend transferring Membership Rewards points to Marriott in most situations since Amex points are usually much more valuable for transferring one to one to airline miles. That said, if you have a high value Marriott award in mind, it could make sense. Also, you could use this bonus to indirectly convert Membership Rewards to airline miles that are not directly supported by Amex. For example, with the 30% bonus, you could indirectly transfer 47K Membership Rewards points into 25K Turkish, Asiana, or Alaska miles as follows:
- Transfer 47K Membership Rewards to 61K Marriott Bonvoy (30% bonus), then:
- Transfer 60K Marriott Bonvoy to 25K Turkish, Asiana, or Alaska miles
Is that a good deal? With Turkish, in particular, it could be. Consider that it’s possible to book one-way United awards to Hawaii for only 7.5K Turkish miles. 25K Turkish miles would be more than enough to fly 3 people one-way to Hawaii! That said, you could also transfer 52,500 Amex points to Singapore Airlines in order to book 3 one-way United flights to Hawaii (at 17.5K each). Personally, I think it’s worth the extra few Amex points to avoid the headaches involved in booking Turkish awards.
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Yeah this isn’t showing up on my (canadian) amex membership rewards page
That’s not surprising — Membership Rewards promos, transfer ratios, and even transfer partners can be different between different countries. I think Amex Membership Rewards in Singapore has Korean as a transfer partner for instance (don’t quote me on that as I didn’t double check while typing this response). Obviously there are similarities between the US and Canadian versions, but promos don’t always match up.
What I like best about this post is the Quick Thoughts at the end. I don’t have insight into all of these slick ways to transfer points around. It’s like there needs to be some sort of subway like map of the transfer methods. Get on the Amex MR points train and you can get off at the Marriott stop. Then get on the Marriott train and you can get off at the Turkish Airlines stop. Similar for Chase points and the others. It’s a bunch of spaghetti to me.
I think this only makes sense to top up for a Marriott award since there isn’t a great way to MS Marriott points anymore. So, say, $11,750 in spend on an Amex Gold turns into 61,000 Marriott points. That’s a lot better than grinding out $30,500 for 61K on the existing 2x Marriott cards.
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Not available in amex Middle East (UAE)