Air Canada Aeroplan aren’t the only ones to come out with a hotel transfer bonus today, we also see one from Etihad Geust and this up to 30% bonus from United MileagePlus.
United has brought back their bonus for converting hotel points to MileagePlus miles. This time it is a tiered bonus that offers anywhere from 20% to 30% bonus miles depending on the total amount of hotel points you transfer over.
The up to 30% Bonus:
Receive up 30% bonus MileagePlus Miles when you convert any hotel program partner points into United MileagePlus Miles. Max. bonus of 25,000 miles. Valid until Oct 31, 24. Click here for more details & to register for this offer. (Registration is required)
Should you transfer points?
In most cases the only transfer makes sense is converting Marriott Bonvoy points since they transfer at a 3 to 1 ratio. You’ll also want to transfer 60,000 point batches to ensure you get the 10,000 bonus miles from Marriott. For example, if you do transfer 60,000 Bonvoy Points to MileagePlus Miles you would end up with 30,000 miles (20,000 miles from the 3:1 ratio plus the 10,000 bonus miles) and a 25% bonus. Transfer more to get to 40,000 miles and you’ll get 30% bonus miles.
In past years they would award 30% on all transfers but as you can see this year the 30% only kicks in at 40,000 miles, which is conveniently higher (for United) than that 30,000 miles you get for transferring 60,000 Bonvoy points.
All other hotel programs have pretty terrible conversion ratios however if you have orphaned points in those programs that you know you’ll never use, by all means convert them over so you can get some sort of value from them.
Even for us Canadians this United transfer bonus may make more sense than the Aeroplan one given that you get more MileagePlus miles for the standard Marriott conversion with 60,000 Bonvoy giving 30,000 MileagePlus miles versus 25,000 Aeroplan points and not to mention with the United bonus it’s 25% extra versus Aeroplan’s 15%. Really it will come down to how you use the miles/points and what redemptions you have in mind but as both offers run until October 31. Ultimately I would compare the redemptions on United versus Aeroplan and see which offer will work out best for you.