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United Airlines is offering a 30% transfer bonus when you convert hotel points to United Mileage Plus miles. This can be especially attractive for those converting Marriott Bonvoy points to United miles since it means you can get a transfer ratio of 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points to 39,000 United Mileage Plus miles.
The Deal
- United Mileage Plus is offering a 30% bonus when you convert hotel points to United miles when you first register and then transfer by 10/31/23 (up to a maximum of 25,000 bonus miles). This is on top of any bonuses offered by the corresponding hotel program.
- Direct link to register for this deal
Key Terms
- Must register first
- Expires 10/31/23
- Maximum of 25,000 bonus miles awarded by United
Quick Thoughts
Generally speaking, transferring hotel points to airline miles will give you atrocious value in the vast majority of situations. Unless you have hotel points languishing near certain expiration, it generally doesn’t make sense to transfer hotel points to any airline program. That’s still true with this United bonus.
The singular exception to the rule is that Marriott Bonvoy transfers to airline programs can be a reasonable value. Marriott transfers 3:1 to most airline programs (yes, that’s better than other hotel programs) and if you convert 60,0000 Marriott Bonvoy points to airline miles, you get 20,000 miles (3:1) plus a bonus 5,000 miles when transferring to many programs. However, Marriott and United have a special arrangement whereby you earn a bonus of 10,000 miles when transferring 60K Marriott points. In other words, 60K Marriott points convert to 20,000 United miles + 10,000 bonus miles from Marriott for 30,000 total United miles.
The 30% bonus from United stacks on top of what you get from the airline program, so when you convert 60K Marriott points to United, rather than getting the ordinary 30K United miles, you will get a total of 39,000 United Mileage Plus miles.
This could be an especially good deal for someone with a lot of Marriott Bonvoy points and no desire to use them toward hotel stays. The better question is whether this is “objectively” worthwhile?
There is no doubt this is a solid deal. Based on our Reasonable Redemption Values, 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points are worth about $480 (you can check the methodology for our Marriott valuation of 0.8cpp in the post What are Marriott points worth?).
On the other hand, United Mileage Plus miles have some highly valuable potential uses also. While United doesn’t always have the most competitive award rates, it certainly isn’t terribly difficult to get well over 1c per mile in value. Our RRV is pegged at 1.3cpm for most airline miles, which would put the United miles at an approximate value of $507.
The true story in either situation though is far more nuanced. If you redeem 70,000 United miles for a one-way business class award to/from Europe, you surely feel like you got far more than 1.3cpm in value, but if you redeem 30K for a domestic economy class award perhaps not so much. By the same token, with hotel prices climbing through the roof as of late, it isn’t difficult to get well over 1cpp out of Marriott points.
Keep in mind that you can’t receive more than 25K bonus miles at 30%, so you would only get the full 30% on the first 120K points converted from Marriott. It is also worth a mention that Marriott allows members to combine points with any other member, which could be useful if you have multiple friends or family members looking to combine points for this.
Ultimately, I think this just comes down to a personal decision. In my case, I am tempted because I haven’t carried a useful balance of United miles in a long time. However, there just aren’t many reasonable ways of generating Marriott points and I could transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points or Bilt points to United if I really wanted United miles. I’ll therefore probably hold my Marriott points for stays since I am still generally getting very good value out of them as compared to the crazy cash rates of late.
It probably isn’t worth considering transfers from most other hotel programs to united unless you have a quantity of hotel points that will otherwise expire unused.
H/T: Award Wallet
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I transferred 180,000 Marriott points to United. 90,000 United miles were instantly credited to my account.
Today I received an additional 18,000 miles instead of the 25,000 I was expecting. Anyone else in the same boat?
same here. transfer 60,000 Marriott points to 30,000 United and got only 6,000 bonus on Nov-27
Same here. 18,000 additional for the 180,000 Marriott points transfer.
I too transferred 180,000 points and received only 18,000 miles instead of 25,000.
Not sure what is going on, but I will give it few more weeks before calling United.
Same here at 120k becoming 72k United, not 78k. It appears the 30% bonus with this promotion is only applied on the base Marriott to United points not the bonus points you get from Marriott to United specifically vs every other airline. Not the end of the world, but a minor annoyance.
I just transferred 60k Marriott points and miles showed up instantly. Will wait for the bonus. Seems like a good deal if one has a good selection of flights on United.
To get the 30% bonus, must you convert at least 60,000 points?
I only got 30K after transferring 60k as well. After being punted back and forth between United and Marriott Bonvoy, they told me that it may take up to 7 days for that additional 30% to show up. Hopefully they show up
Help Justin,
Let us know once you have the additional 30% bonus miles please I don’t want to risk my Marriott points and then end up with 30K miles. I ask Nikhill as well
I also only got 30K after transferring 60K.
See below T&C:
https://promo.united.com/offers/p2m
Thank you Nick
I only got 30 K after transferring 60 K
Please Dear Nihhile,
Let us know once you have the additional 30% bonus miles please I don’t want to risk my Marriott points and then end up with 30K miles. Please let us know as soon as you can see it in your account.
I don’t think it’s coming anytime. Does anyone else got 30% extra ? I got en email for bonus confirmation. In my account 20 K is listed as transfer (1:3) ratio and 10K as bonus. So I guess that’s the 30% bonus.fooled by United.
Please correct me if I’m wrong. In order to get the full 25k bonus, the best course of action would be to transfer 180k Marriott points to MileagePlus. Transferring a reduced amount of points on the 3rd chunk would end up with a reduced number of combined miles.
This is correct. So transferring the last 60K Marriott points may not be worth it to you as the first two 60K transfers would net 39K UA points a piece but the last 60K Marriott points transfer would only net 37K UA points (9K bonus plus 9K bonus plus 7K bonus = 25K max bonus UA points). Still not too bad. (Just remember to transfer in 60K increments or you’ll miss out on the Marriott 10K UA points bonus per 60K Marriott points transfer.)
So in the example above we can transfer 180,000 in one go. Is that right?
Or do we have to transfer 3 lots of 60,000?