Update, 11/8: As predicted, Marriott continues to devalue this benefit. 11/30 will be the final day to earn a 5,000 mile bonus for every 60K Marriott points transferred to Korean Air.
Update, 10/31: Today is the final day to earn a 5,000 mile bonus for every 60K Marriott points transferred to American, Delta, and Avianca Lifemiles! You can transfer up to 240,000 points per day.
Originally posted on 10/19:
Marriott has been steadily devaluing their points since they bought Starwood. The program launched with top-tier hotels going for 60,000 points, but those now go for up to 120,000 points.
Worse yet, that 120K cap only applies for this year. Starting next year, all bets are off as pricing will be fully untethered from the old award charts and there will be no set minimum or maximum award pricing.
What will points be worth? Whatever Marriott wants them to be worth.
The backstop keeping Marriott honest has been the ability to transfer 60K Marriott points into 25,000 airline miles with dozens of airlines or 27,500 United miles. That was inherited from the SPG transfer ratio of 20,000 Starpoints into 25,000 airline miles after they tripled Starpoints balances to convert into Marriott points. Alas, Marriott also changed credit card earnings from 1 Starpoint per dollar to 2 Marriott points per dollar, which made spending on Marriott cards a poor value proposition.
However this backstop of value remained. In other words, if you value an American Airlines mile at say, 1.45 cents each, the value of a Marriott point could never go less than 0.6 cents as you could always transfer out 60K Marriott points into 25K American Airlines miles. Marriott never bothered updating their website to show that you get a bonus for transfers in increments of 60K points, but the bonus posts nonetheless.
Unfortunately, Marriott has quietly announced that this backstop of value will begin to erode. Marriott tells DansDeals that effective 11/1/22, you will no longer receive 5K bonus miles for transferring increments of 60K Marriott points to American, Delta, or Avianca Lifemiles.
Instead you will always receive a 3:1 transfer ratio for those airlines, so 60K Marriott points will become 20K miles. If you value an American Airlines mile at say, 1.45 cents each, the value of a Marriott point is now backstopped at 0.48 cents instead of 0.6 cents.
I asked Marriott if this will change will spread to other airlines as well, but they said they have nothing to share about other airlines.
That means for now, airlines like Air Canada, Alaska, British Airways, Emirates, Etihad, Korean, Qantas, Singapore, and Turkish continue to offer 60K to 25K transfers and United continues to offer 60K to 27.5K transfers.
But my guess is that in time, those will be devalued as well. If you want American, Delta, or Avianca Lifemiles, you may as well make those transfers now.
I currently value Marriott points around 0.6-0.7 cents each, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see that drop to 0.45-0.55 cents next year when pricing is fully untethered from the old award charts.
Will you transfer Marriott points to airlines before the transfer ratio is devalued?
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53 Comments On "[Final Day For Bonuses On Transfers To Korean] Bonvoyed: Marriott Will Begin Devaluing Airline Mileage Transfers, Removing The Backstop Of Bonvoy Points Value"
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Can someone explain to me what they are trying to achieve? They seem solely focused on enraging their customers who are most loyal to them.
They must think that they can Bonvoy the program into higher profits and that most customers won’t notice or care.
By decimating the program? I mean, just the drop in spend on the Bonvoyed cards must have hurt them. I don’t know anyone who still uses those cards.
As far as staying at Marriott hotels, I’m staying at more and more Hyatt’s lately.
It worked for Delta. 🙁
That’s what led United to try to copy them. It’s all rather sad and boggles my mind. But most people out there aren’t reading blogs like this to learn to maximize value.
So in a way, the proliferation of points blogs both kill and save the points values for us consumers. 🙂
The sad truth is, that with their superior footprint (especially valuable to road warriors) coupled with the fact that 99% of their clientele are uneducated, this will not hurt them in the least.
Yup exactly. I have relatives that travel for business and always stay at Marriotts. The large footprint is just too important for them. They can pretty much gut it as far as they want.
Plenty of clueless people still use the card. I see it being used all the time.
How long until they hire Toby and start shutting down anyone (and stealing their Bonvoypesos) who followed their crazy CC bonus restrictions but still managed to get both Amex and Chase cards?
curious, how do we know for sure take that they will take off the 120K cap next year?
They told me that previously.
wow… any idea what things will look like? will they still have some sort of category (point range system), giving a free night up to 35K for the credit card can be meaningless if the hotels go through the roof…
No categories or ranges.
So Hilton can charge 300k points a night in a Waldorf or Conrad etc, does that mean st Regis etc Gona cost that also? Btw Hyatt still the best with points and with the card being a discoverist they usually always upgrade you
It might. TBD.
Whenever I look on the Hyatt app I get the message that the hotel is not available for points. I’m a Disciverist too. Doesn’t seem to mean anything
You also have Aegean Airlines that you get the 5K bonus which could be useful sometimes.
What is the best Amex to do spending on now?
For general spend, it’s the Blue Business Plus which gets 2 pts per dollar (up to $50,000 spend annually).
what about for more then 50,000 annual spend. Any good Amex Cards?
Do you really value AA miles at 1.45? You recently said 1.3.
But have no plans to fly now, should still transfer?
no
If they are going to let more people buy into status, then they have to lower the product, elite or not.
trying to transfer marriot to united todayoct 26 and it says you get only 22k
Normal. It never states the increment bonus.
Just checked I have 480K Bonvoy points. Does that mean that I can transfer 240K to Delta for 75K miles? Any advantage to AA over Delta?
240K Marriott becomes 100K AA or Delta if you transfer by tomorrow.
480K becomes 200K.
I’d choose AA over Delta.
Dan, I actually went ahead and [tried] transferred 240K. Got a message that it would translate to 80K in Delta miles. Guess what! The miles aren’t showing up in Delta! The 240K Marriott points are indeed gone from my account though.
I looked around online and seems that some people have gotten messed over by the Bonvoy transfer. Not really sure what to do. Have you heard of this as well?
It takes up to a week.
You get a 5K mile bonus for each 60K Marriott transferred until tomorrow, so you will get 100K Delta.
Dan, nevermind my last comment. My delta account literally just go updated in the past 2 hours :). I took 3 days, but finally made it. I got scared as I got no email notification about the transfer from Marriot nor Delta.
Dan, can you elaborate on why AA over Delta?
Because I consistently get much more value from AA miles.
These points are already so hard to use. So many hotels only allow you to book base rooms with points/certificates.
But even worse is the way their servers are down every time you need to confirm changes account details by text/email.
Anyone want 150k worthless points?
If i can ever get into my account…..
Why not transfer into AA or Lifemiles?
Just transferred didnt realize my bonvoy points are in wife’s name and delta is in my name. Will it go through at the end?
Probably will get rejected and returned, but YMMV.
Hi Dan,
Thanks as always for the informative (if not the happiest) news.
I’m sitting on 1.6M Marriott points and not a big hotel stayer. Flying EWR-TLV or JFK-TLV is my main usage of points etc. should I transfer to Delta or AA tomorrow or is the value safe in Bonvoy?
Probably AA.
Value is certainly not safe in Bonvoy.
WERE AM I SAFEST TRANSFERRING THE POINTS TO?
Just to confirm I read correctly, the bonus transfer to United is not expiring?
Correct.
the page to transfer miles is not available over and over again.. any advice?
Works for me.
https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/redeem/travel/points-to-miles.mi
Does it expire at midnight EST or CST?
The only info I have is, “The bonus will no longer be available on Nov 1.”
Says it on the site already doesn’t apply to aaa. Should I try it now and see?
Can I book on the current award chart for a stay in early 2023?
Hey all, time to post to AA?
I called AA and they said 10 days!!! That’s not good for my schedule
Any suggestions to what card to switch to? Not a huge point earner (spend $50-70k/yr on CC) and I travel once a year or so on vacation with the family
Marriott’s point system is all over the place without an award chart. 60,000 points for a Sheraton in Florida and 35,000 points for a hotel that for some reason went for $900 a night in South America.
“It worked for Delta.
That’s what led United to try to copy them. It’s all rather sad and boggles my mind. But most people out there aren’t reading blogs like this to learn to maximize value.“
But aren’t they loosing a lot of money as I would assume a lot of people stoped using delta points CC and move to a CC that offers max benifts?
Just confused because these companies must make a lot of money from the banks selling points to them.
Hi Dan, thank you very much for all the daily deals & valuable infos!!
My wife’s account had a 7 night certificate which Bonvoy transferred (a while back) into 240k ponts. These points are set to expire 1/1/23. My account has 95k points which I accumulated using Amex Bonvoy business card.
We don’t have any plans to use my wife’s points now, nor do we have plans to fly either. We can try asking to extend the expiry date, but if they won’t, what do you suggest we do?