You can earn 25 percent bonus MileagePlus miles when converting hotel points — up to a maximum of 20,000 bonus award miles — through Wednesday, November 30, 2016, which is when the Points to Miles 2016 promotion ends.
All you have to do is register here to implement the process of converting your unused frequent guest loyalty program points into MileagePlus miles with a bonus of 25 percent.
At the conclusion of the promotion, all MileagePlus miles you earn by qualifying activity will be multiplied by 25 percent — with the exceptions of MileagePlus miles earned from converting the frequent guest loyalty program points of…
- Club Carlson, which will instead be multiplied by 40 percent
- Choice Privileges, which will instead be multiplied by 50 percent
…in each case without duplication of bonuses, to determine the eligible bonus up to a maximum of 20,000 bonus MileagePlus miles.
Bonus MileagePlus miles will be credited into your account on or before Monday, January 30, 2017.
Select Terms and Conditions
You must earn award MileagePlus miles as a result of one or more conversion transactions of points to miles from any combination of hotel partner frequent guest loyalty programs which offer a points to miles transfer program that are conducted during the promotional period — otherwise known as qualifying activity — in order to qualify for MileagePlus Hotel Points-to-Miles bonus miles.
MileagePlus will not be responsible for technical problems with partner miles postings — or failures or delays in miles postings by hotel partners — which would render any points to miles converted as ineligible under this promotion.
This offer:
- Cannot be combined with other MileagePlus offers
- Is subject to change without notice
MileagePlus miles accrued, awards, and benefits issued are subject to change; and are subject to the rules of the United Airlines MileagePlus frequent flier loyalty program — including without limitation the Premier elite level status program, which are expressly incorporated herein. Bonus award MileagePlus miles, award MileagePlus miles and any other MileagePlus miles earned through non-flight activity do not count toward qualification for Premier elite level status unless expressly stated otherwise.
Please allow up to eight weeks after completed qualifying activity for miles to post to your account. Taxes and fees related to award travel are the responsibility of the member of the United Airlines MileagePlus frequent flier loyalty program.
Other terms and conditions apply.
Summary
One useful aspect of the conversion process is if you have what are known as orphan points in your frequent guest loyalty program account — that is, not enough points to redeem for an award but not worth attempting to earn enough to be able to redeem for an award. The conversion process would be significantly more valuable if odd numbers were permitted to convert points to MileagePlus miles at the proper ratio — such as being able to convert 1,369 miles to 137 MileagePlus miles, for example — and a bonus of 25 percent more MileagePlus miles would be even better.
This offer may seem more generous that this current promotion where you can convert Marriott Rewards points to American Airlines AAdvantage miles and earn a bonus of 20 percent — but that depends on which miles you value more: AAdvantage miles or MileagePlus miles…
…but apparently, MileagePlus miles are supposedly worth $0.02 per mile; while AAdvantage miles are supposedly worth $0.0199 per mile — so technically, MileagePlus miles are worth more than AAdvantage miles.
In all seriousness, matters can be complicated when you consider that 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…
…and do not forget that each transfer of 20,000 Starpoints from the Starwood Preferred Guest program to a frequent flier loyalty program such as MileagePlus earns you a bonus of 5,000 additional Starpoints to be converted — further complicating matters.
To simplify this using Hilton HHonors points as an example, you can convert 10,000 Hilton HHonors points to 1,000 award MileagePlus miles — excluding the bonus of 25 percent. When you consider that you can use as few as 5,000 Hilton HHonors points for a redemption of one free award night in a hotel property — and when you further consider that you would be required to convert 200,000 Hilton HHonors points into 20,000 MileagePlus miles when you could use those points for at least two free award nights at a hotel in the most expensive category just to get enough miles for a domestic round-trip itinerary within the United States when you include the bonus of 25 percent — this offer seems almost pointless and not a good deal after all in terms of value.
Still, crunch the numbers yourself from the frequent guest loyalty program which you are considering converting to MileagePlus miles — click here for the list of lodging chains whose frequent guest loyalty programs participate in the conversion process to MileagePlus miles; as well as the details and conversion rates for each program — and see whether or not the conversion is actually worth conducting for yourself.
Photograph ©2013 by Brian Cohen.
