As I just spent some time comparing hotel loyalty programs, I decided to also look at the opportunities to transfer hotel rewards points. This post contains a simple table for each of the six major hotel chains and their airline transfer partners. (I’ve done this before, but it is two years out-of-date.)
Update: You may be interested in trying a new tool I created, the Points Transfer Calculator, which will help you explore all your transfer options and calculate the number of points you can expect to receive.
Many people like to transfer their hotel rewards points to different airline loyalty programs to make it easier to book a free flight. This has two advantages: (1) You’ll earn miles faster, making it easier to book high value rewards. (2) You’ll sometimes get a better return with airline redemptions since these are based on distance and not cost. Contrast this with hotel loyalty programs that have added many more tiers and enabling them to better match the cost of a hotel with a higher award cost.
I’ll save more of the analysis for future posts. For now, I’ve at least gathered all the data. You’ll find the minimum number of points required to make a transfer and the number of miles you’ll receive. I also created a new metric –“MPP” or “miles per point” — that represents the number of miles you’ll earn in return for transferring 1,000 hotel rewards points. This makes it easier to compare programs when one has a minimum transfer of 2,500 points and the other has a minimum of 10,000. However, MPP says nothing about value; read the next section to learn why.
Use these links to jump down to the program of interest. Otherwise, the very first table summarizes the transfer options according to MPP (including bonuses for transferring large blocks of points.)