Convert hotel points into AAdvantage miles with a 25% bonus

AAdvantage are offering a 25% bonus when you convert hotel points into miles until 30 October, with no cap on the number of bonus miles you can earn.

This offer is run on average once per year.

Converting hotel points into airline miles is usually poor value. You’re generally better off maintaining your points balance to redeem on free nights, especially if these points have been earned the hard way through frequent stays.

However if you have a massive horde of hotel points that you don’t otherwise plan to use on future stays, this offer could be your chance to earn some extra miles above those that you would usually receive from any transfer.

You can even get some extra value our of your American Express Membership Rewards points on this offer.

How to Register

Registration is required for this promotion, which you can do here.

Conversion table

The table below shows the participating hotel partner transfer programs, and how many bonus miles would be received at the minimum conversion rates:

Key Terms

• Only the hotel programs listed in the table above are participating in this offer
• The 25% bonus miles will post to your AAdvantage account within 7 business days after the initial conversion activity has been posted by the hotel partner
• Conversions for hotel and air packages from Marriott Bonvoy aren’t included in this offer, nor will you earn a bonus on the 5,000 extra miles that Marriott offer for transfers in 60,000 point intervals

How you could ‘hack’ this offer

Below are two ways in which you could increase the value of this conversion offer.

Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott Bonvoy let you purchase 50,000 points per calendar year. Until 18 October, you can receive a 30% discount on any points purchase.

Providing you have not bought any points this year, you could buy up to 100,000 Marriott points under this sale across two transactions.

If this is you, here is how you could stack these two offers:

1. Buy 50,000 Marriott points in one transaction, and 10,000 points in a second.
2. Convert these 60,000 points to 20,000 AAdvantage miles.
3. You will get 5,000 miles bonus from Marriott, giving you 25,000 AAdvantage miles, and then a further 25% bonus, giving you a total of 31,250 AAdvantage miles.

This stack will let you buy 31,250 AAdvantage miles for only $525 USD, or 1.68 cents USD per mile.

This is slightly less than the lowest ever 1.72 cents you could buy AAdvantage miles for.

However as you’d usually need to buy over 100,000 miles to take advantage of this lowest ever price, the process above affords you the opportunity to top up your account with a lesser number of miles almost as cheaply.

Getting the 30% bonus miles out of Amex Membership Rewards points

If you hold an American Express Platinum Charge or a Platinum Edge card, you can convert your Membership Rewards Points (MRP) to AAdvantage miles using Marriott Bonvoy.

MRP convert to Marriott points at a 3:2 ratio. These then convert into AAdvantage miles at a 3:1 ratio.

Here is an example of how such a transfer would work out:

1. 90,000 MRP will convert to 60,000 Marriott points.
2. 60,000 Marriott points will convert to 25,000 AAdvantage miles (includes 5,000 mile bonus from Marriott).
3. With the 25% bonus (on the standard 20,000 miles, not the bonus 5,000 miles), you will receive 31,250 miles total.

This gives you a ratio of ~3 MRP : 1 AAdvantage mile – while this is more than the standard 2:1 ratio for other American Express Australia airline partners, it is still a handy option to have should you be just short of AAdvantage miles needed for a redemption.

Amex warn that transfers of MRP to Marriott can take up to 14 working days. To be safe, this means you’d be wanting to take advantage of this conversion method sooner rather than later if you want to use in conjunction with AAdvantage’s 20% bonus miles promotion.

Summing up

If you have a stack of hotel points and prefer free flights over free nights, or you were already planning to make a transfer, then this offer could be of some value.

You could also take advantage of the current offer to boost the power of your Amex Membership Rewards points, though you would have to be quick at planning this.

Remember, point devaluations can be introduced with or without notice, so you should only convert your hotel reward program points to AAdvantage if you have a specific redemption in mind.

This content contains affiliate links from which Point Hacks may earn commissions from transactions generated from new customers, bookings and general enquiries. Find out more here.