Transfer Bilt points to Shangri-La, Preferred Hotels, Marriott, & Wyndham with the right credit card

An astute reader shared an interesting way to indirectly transfer Bilt points to several different hotel programs including Shangri-La Circle, Preferred Hotels, Marriott, and more.

To do this, you first transfer your Bilt points to Alaska Airlines. To transfer those Atmos Rewards points on to the eligible airlines, you need an Atmos Rewards Summit credit card, so this opportunity isn’t available to everyone.

You can access the transfer page on the Alaska Airlines website here. Note that you need to be an Atmos Rewards Summit cardholder to view that page; if you’re not, it’ll either display an error page or it’ll redirect to your main Atmos Rewards account page (I’ve had it do both).

On that page, you’ll see the following transfer options:

As you can see, the transfer ratios are as follows:

• 1,000:1,000 Wyndham Rewards
• 1,000:125 Shangri-La Circle
• 1,000:2,000 Preferred Hotels iPrefer
• 1,000:1,000 IHG One Rewards
• 1,000:1,000 Marriott Bonvoy

This is an interesting way to indirectly transfer Bilt points to all these programs, but in reality none of them are really worth considering other than a rare outsized value redemption.

IHG One Rewards

IHG is already a Bilt transfer partner, so there’s no need to add Alaska Airlines as a middleman. Besides, you can often buy IHG points for 0.5 cents per point, so transferring Bilt points or Alaska Airlines Atmos Rewards points offers poor value.

Shangri-La Circle

This was the hotel loyalty program that initially caught my eye. The Shangri-La Circle loyalty program isn’t a transfer partner of any other US-based transferable currency, so there’s no easy way to collect its points outside of staying with them.

The thing is, the 1,000:125 transfer ratio isn’t a worthwhile exchange. When researching the value of Shangri-La Circle points, I discovered that in April 2022 they changed from having an award chart to moving to a fixed-value points program, similar to how Accor’s ALL program works. 15 Shangri-La Circle points are worth $1 (US), so transferring 1,000 Atmos points to get 125 Shangri-La points effectively gets you $8.33 of value which is a poor exchange.

Wyndham Rewards

It is possible to get better than one cent per point of value when redeeming Wyndham points, so the 1,000:1,000 transfer ratio might not look too bad on the face of it. However, Wyndham has started to frequently sell its points for 0.8 cents per point or cheaper, so this is still a poor value for Bilt/Alaska points.

Marriott Bonvoy

It’s a similar situation with Marriott too. They frequently sell Bonvoy points for less than one cent per point, while it can also be hard getting more than one cent per point of value. A 1,000:1,000 transfer ratio therefore isn’t ideal.

Preferred Hotels iPrefer

Capital One recently added the Preferred Hotels iPrefer loyalty program as a transfer partner on a 1:2 basis. Being able to do the same with Bilt points might therefore seem like a decent enough deal.

However, if you have access to Citi ThankYou points, those can be transferred to iPrefer on a 1:4 basis – twice as good. We’ve pegged the Reasonable Redemption Value of iPrefer points at 0.5 cents per point, so a 1:2 transfer ratio via Bilt/Alaska makes that one cent per point. That said, it is possible to get outsized value with iPrefer in some cases, so there might be some value to be had here with the right redemption.

Atmos Rewards points don’t expire, so it’s not like it’d be worth transferring orphaned points to one of these hotel programs to ensure they don’t expire and disappear. Besides, you need an Alaska Summit card in order to make these transfers; if you have one of those, you’re likely engaged in the Atmos Rewards program more than your average person, so there’s less likelihood that you’ll have orphaned Atmos points with no plans to earn more.

Thanks to DOC Fan (who I guess is also an FM fan 😉 ) for the heads up about this.

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