You will earn a bonus of 20 percent on each conversion of your Marriott Rewards points to American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier loyalty program miles through Monday, November 14, 2016 at 11:59 in the evening Central Daylight Time — and this offer is valid with regular point conversions as well as with Marriott Rewards Travel Packages.
Earn a Bonus of 20 Percent When Converting Marriott Rewards Points to AAdvantage Miles
To qualify for this offer, you must initiate the AAdvantage mileage conversions with the Marriott Rewards frequent guest loyalty program and be in good standing in the American Airlines AAdvantage frequent flier loyalty program. You may convert your Marriott Rewards points into AAdvantage miles multiple times during the promotion period.
To earn the conversion bonus 20 percent, you must convert Marriott Rewards points into AAdvantage miles — and here are the point conversion options you have available to you at a glance:
Marriott Rewards Points |
AAdvantage Miles Reward |
Bonus AAdvantage Miles |
Total AAdvantage Miles |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10,000 | 2,000 | 400 | 2,400 |
| 20,000 | 5,000 | 1,000 | 6,000 |
| 30,000 | 10,000 | 2,000 | 12,000 |
| 70,000 | 25,000 | 5,000 | 30,000 |
| 140,000 | 50,000 | 10,000 | 60,000 |
This offer is not transferable and cannot be reversed, as airline transfers are one-way and cannot be refunded or reversed.
Select Terms and Conditions
Bonus miles will be posted by American Airlines to your qualifying AAdvantage account within seven business days after the initial conversion activity has been posted by Marriott Rewards. Unless otherwise specified, bonus AAdvantage miles earned in this promotion do not count toward elite status qualification or Million Miler status.
Once AAdvantage miles have been requested by you, miles will automatically be transferred to your AAdvantage account. Please allow approximately six weeks for AAdvantage miles to be posted to your frequent flier loyalty program account; or contact Marriott Rewards Customer Service to inquire about express service, which may include a fee. Once miles are processed and credited to your AAdvantage account, changes, reissuance or re-credit of Marriott Rewards points are not allowed; and AAdvantage miles cannot be transferred back to your Marriott Rewards frequent guest loyalty program account.
Other terms and conditions apply.
Is This a Good Deal? That Depends…
This offer is similar to the one for Starpoints back in August, where you could have earned 30,000 AAdvantage miles after transferring 20,000 Starpoints when all bonuses were included. Starpoints can still be used for this offer once they are transferred to Marriott Rewards points — the ratio of Starpoints to Marriott Rewards points is 1 to 3, as they can now be freely transferred back and forth between accounts — which means that if you transfer 46,667 Starpoints to become 140,000 Marriott Rewards points, you can earn 60,000 AAdvantage miles. That is not as good as the other offer, which only required 40,000 Starpoints for those same 60,000 AAdvantage miles…
…and even then, not everyone would agree that the other deal was all that good anyway. “This seems like a really bad deal to me. SPG still has great redemption value. AAdvantage? Wow! Not often”, opined InsideFlyer member KenInEscazu. “If only the service would match the price in miles or dollars. Don’t know about the rest of you, but I’ve had major issues on almost every trip to or within the US this year on AA. I thought I would be flying free for the rest of the year, and I now just hope I can plan the remainder of my travel far enough in advance to avoid their redemption shenanigans. Otherwise, I’m going to be looking for price on the carrier who in balance serves me best.”
Then again, there is some potential value if you transfer 140,000 Marriott Rewards points into seven nights at a Category 1–5 hotel and earn 144,000 AAdvantage miles through this promotion: “…the real value can come with turning your Marriott points into AA miles through Marriott’s Flights and Hotel packages…you could also turn 90,000 SPG points into 7 nights at a Category 1 – 5 Marriott hotel and get 144,000 AA miles”, as explained in this article by Charles Barkowski of Running with Miles. “That transfer, without the hotel nights, is pretty good already. If you were to transfer 90,000 SPG points to AA, you would get 110,000 AA miles through the regular transfer rate. But, no one would transfer 90,000 as it is in blocks of 20,000 that the 5,000 mile bonus gets added. So, let’s say you transfer a total of 100,000 SPG points to AA directly. You would end up with 125,000 AA miles – and that would require you transferring 10,000 more SPG points than you need to here!”
Again, the key words are some potential value. Even with that example provided by Charles Barkowski, not everyone will agree that this is a great — or even good — offer…
…and if you prefer United Airlines, you can get a discount of 20 percent when converting Marriott Rewards points to MileagePlus miles through the ongoing RewardsPlus initiative; or you can earn ten percent more MileagePlus miles when you redeem Marriott Rewards points for exclusive RewardsPlus travel packages. As with the current limited time offer for AAdvantage miles, not everyone will value this offer equally.
Summary
If you are looking for a quick way to build up AAdvantage miles in your account and you value them more than Marriott Rewards points or Starpoints, then this promotion could be of use to you — but check your valuations first, just to be sure you are getting the most value for your points.
Photograph ©2015 by Brian Cohen.
