The Offer
- American Airlines are offering a 20% transfer bonus when you transfer Marriott Rewards points to them. This also includes the popular flight and hotel packages!
The Fine Print
- To qualify for this AAdvantage® bonus mile offer, member must initiate the AAdvantage® mileage conversions with the Marriott Rewards® program between 12:00 am Central Time, October 15, 2016 and 11:59 pm Central Time, November 14, 2016 (the “Promotion Period”), and be in good standing in the AAdvantage® program. Members can convert multiple times during the Promotion Period
- To earn the 20% conversion bonus, member must convert points from the Marriott Rewards® program. This offer is non-transferable and non-reversible
- Bonus miles will be posted by American Airlines to the qualifying AAdvantage® member’s account within 7 business days after the initial conversion activity has been posted by Marriott Rewards®. Bonus miles earned in this promotion do not count toward elite status qualification.
Our Verdict
Keep in mind you can convert 3 Marriott rewards points to 1 SPG point and then those transfer directly to American Airlines at a rate of 1:1 and you get a bonus 5,000 points if you transfer 20,000 or more. Let’s compare whether it’s better to transfer to SPG and then to American Airlines or take advantage of this promotion:
| Marriott Points | This Bonus | SPG |
| 10000 | 2400 | 3333 |
| 20000 | 6000 | 6666 |
| 30000 | 12000 | 10000 |
| 70000 | 30000 | 28333 |
| 140000 | 60000 | 56666 |
As you can see sometimes you’re better offer using this promotion, but obviously if you were converting SPG points you’d try to transfer in increments of 20,000 points to get the 5,000 point bonus. The real value of this promotion comes from the flight and hotel packages.
During this promotion you’d receive an additional 20% on the quoted miles above. This means for 270,000 Marriott points or 90,000 SPG points you could get 7 nights at a category 1-5 property and 144,000 American Airline miles. If you transferred them using SPG directly you’d only get 110,000 miles. Although it’s important to keep in mind that American Airlines have offered a 20% transfer bonus from SPG in the past (meaning that 20,000 SPG points = 30,000 American Airline miles) and I suspect Marriott is leveraging this partnership to get their own 20% bonus. United are also offering a 25% transfer bonus on all hotel points.
Hat tip to ha_ka on /r/churning
AA miles are absolutely worthless. Do yourself a favor and transfer them to united or southwest instead, and youll get some decent value.