Get Airline Miles using Your Hotel Points

Almost all hotel reward programs allow you to convert your hotel points to frequent flyer miles. However, given the poor conversion rates, this is rarely a good deal.

You will usually get much more value from your hotel points by using them for free hotel nights, rather than a handful of frequent flyer miles.

The main exception are SPG / Marriott points, where converting to airline miles provides very good value for your points, but usually still not as much as you can get by using them for hotel rooms (unless you are getting and highly value business and first class tickets).

Starting in August, the Marriott and SPG programs will be combined in a new unified rewards program. The frequent flyer transfer program will be improved and simplified. All of the airlines that participate with either the current SPG and Marriott program will be combined into a single program, and the transfer rate of the airlines that are currently only partners with Marriott will be improved to the equivalent of the current SPG transfer rates.

The big negative is on the credit-card earning side, as spending with the SPG credit cards will only generate 2/3 of the miles that they do today.

Unlike most other hotel-based loyalty points, you will get good value when you transfer your Starwood and Marriott points to one of dozens of different frequent flyer programs.

Starwood and Marriott Points are interchangeable. You can instantly convert 3 Marriott Points to 1 Starwood point, or vis versa. That means you can use either type of points, at the same relative value, to book Starwood or Marriott hotels, or transfer to Starwood and Marriott airline partners.
It is usually better to transfer Starwood points, rather than Marriott points, to airline programs. Starwood points transfer to almost all their partners on a 1:1 basis. Even better, if you transfer 20,000 Starpoints, you’ll get 25,000 frequent flyer miles. At a value of 2.1 cents per Starpoint (or .7 cents per Marriott point), you are acquiring frequent flyer miles for 1.68 cents each. Marriott usually gives you less than 1 mile for every 3 Marriott points, so you'll do better converting them to Starwood points first.
If you want to fly on United, you are better off transferring Marriott points, rather than Starwood points. For some reason, when you transfer Starwood points, you only get ½ of a United mile for each point. At the same time, Marriott has a special relationship with United that gives you a higher-than-normal transfer rate. So, if you have Starwood points, you should convert them to Marriott points first, and then to United. 18,667 Starpoints convert into 56,000 Marriott points, and then into 25,000 United miles. Because of a similar low transfer rate from Starwood to GOL, you are also better off transferring from the Marriott side instead.
Marriott has a few partners, that Starwood does not. Marriott has a few transfer partners that aren’t available directly from Starwood. For Copa and Frontier airlines, 25,000 miles will cost 70,000 Marriott points or 23,333 Starpoints. At a value of .7 cents per Marriott point, you are acquiring airline miles for about 2 cents each.

For Aeroflot, Avianca, Qantas, Southwest, South African, TAM, TAP, and Turkish Airlines, points are more expensive. You’ll need to purchase in different size chunks, but at the rate you are paying, 25,000 miles would cost 100,000 Marriott Points, or 33,333 Starpoints. The acquisition cost is about 2.8 cents each. You will generally be better off trying to get miles in some other way.

If you need lots of miles, you can take advantage of Marriott’s Hotel + Air Awards . When you need a lot of miles, it is cheaper to get a package, than to just get the airline miles. For other transfers, it only requires a few additional points to get a certificate for a 7-night Marriott hotel stay, along with the airline miles you need. Use Marriott Hotel + Air Packages to Get More Value From Your Points.

You’ll get poor value by transferring other hotel points to airline miles

Redeeming other hotel points to get airline miles isn’t the best way to use those points. However, if you just need a few more miles to redeem an airline award, and you don’t have any transferable credit card points you can use, it could worthwhile to transfer small amounts of points from your hotel programs.

Because of the lousy exchange rates, most hotel programs have many different willing airline partners. So, it isn’t hard to find available transfer partners, it just requires a lot of points.

	IHG. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of ..5 cents per IHG point, you are acquiring airline miles at 2.5 cents per mile.
	Hilton. The normal rates for Hilton transfers are 1,000 miles per 10,000 points for the more expensive partners, and 1,500 miles per 10,000 points for the less expensive partners. At .45 cents per Hilton point, this works out to around 4.5 or 3 cents per mile, depending on the airline.
	Hyatt. Normal rate is 4,000 miles for every 10,00 points. At a value of 1.75 cents per Hyatt point, you are acquiring miles at a rate of about 4.5 cents per mile. Even with the bonus 5,000 miles you’d get for transferring 50,000 points, this isn’t a very good deal.
	Best Western. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .7 cents per Best Western point, you are acquiring miles at 3.5 cents each.
	Choice. Normal rate is 2,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .6 cents per Choice point, you are acquiring miles at about 3 cents each. However, when you transfer to Southwest, you’ll get 3,000 miles instead, working out to about 2 cents per mile.
	Wyndham. Normal rate is 2,000 miles for 10,000 points. At a value of 1.2 cents per Wyndham point, you are acquiring miles at about 6 cents each.
	La Quinta. Normal rate is 1,667 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .8 cents per La Quinta point, you are acquiring miles at about 4.8 cents each.
	Radisson. Normal rate is 1,000 miles per 10,000 points. At a value of .4 cents per Radisson Reward point, you are acquiring miles at about 4 cents each.