Marriott Travel Packages - What Airline Points to Convert to?

[kamchatsky]

Given the recent merger of Marriott and SPG, I am looking at their Marriott Travel Packages in detail. It does have some great deal. I am looking at converting Amex MR points to SPG then to Marriott reward points.

I am looking at staying for 7 nights at Tokyo later this year, I am looking at purchasing the travel packages which gives me 7-night reward certificate plus a whole bunch of airline points of choice:

Flight and Hotel Packages | Marriott Hotel Packages

I am looking at Cat 8 Marriott hotels (either Tokyo Marriott or The Price Sakura Tower Tokyo) so I am looking at 360000 Marriott points ( = 120000 Starwood Points = 240000 Amex Points). This would get me 7 nights free on Cat 8 hotels, plus the following option of airline miles:

- 132000 United Mileage Plus
- 120000 BA Avios, or AA Advantage Miles, or Alaska Miles, or Delta Skymiles, or VS Virgin Atlantic
- 85000 Qantas Points, or SQ Krisflyer, or CX Asia Miles, or EK Skywards Miles, or EY Etihad Guest Miles, or Avianca LifeMiles

At the moment I could not decide which airline miles to get, as I still have a large bunch of AA, QF and VA miles.

The question is, which one would you choose and why?

 

[Moindardt]

If you are with one world, I would go AA. They are far better and worth 3x more than QF. I have heard a lot of people saying good things about Alaskan miles.
I am very interested in your experience as I am looking at doing the same thing.

 

[drron]

I have been studying these as well but for next year as this year it is getting 50SPG nights so that this time next year am LTP with SPG and then hopefully with MR.
It really depends on your particular circumstances and upcoming travel.Although my major program is AA I have lots of miles as premium awards not as easy now and also having to wait until 331 days.
So possibly SQ as does seem OK for premium awards.
Others-Avianca but miles pretty cheap.
Alaska seems OK but I really hav not looked closely at that program.
EY-their premium awards look costly.And don't want to travel ME airlines so EK out as well.
Used to be in the United program in AN days and didn't like it or the airline.
So a hard question.

 

[mmchow]

Like drron and Moindardt, I have been reading up on this through write up from US bloggers. It really comes down to your travel plans and the preferred airline you would like to travel with.
AA/ Alaska is good ex US but if outside US, AA will be my pick given the extensive partner (oneworld).
Looking forward to the experience of others with this transfer and selection as I am planning on doing the same.

 

[kamchatsky]

I also had a look at AS Alaskan Miles. This is where it gets interesting. The +ve is excellent redemption opportunities for QF, CX and FJ on certain routes (e.g. CX J Australia-HKG is 30K miles, CX J/F Australia-HKG-Continential USA/Canada is 60K/80K miles with free stopover at HKG). The -ve is that you can only redeem certain routes for certain airlines. If it is not in their chart then you cannot redeem it. Eg. you cannot redeem EK/QF Australia-NZ flights, or EK/QF Australia-Dubai flights.

https://www.alaskaair.com/content/mileage-plan/use-miles/award-charts

I am still studying it though so if anyone has more info and tips on Mileage Plan it would be great to hear from you.

For me though, I have narrowed down to the following:
- BA Avios (excellent for short flights, not good for long haul, Oneworld Partner)
- AA Advantage (excellent all around, no free stopover though, Oneworld Partner)
- AS Mileage Plan (amazing rates for certain routes with free stopovers, but restrictive on routes for redemptions).
- UA Mileage Plus (most points awarded (132K), Star Alliance Awards, looks good for Australia-Asia redemptions, still to investigate more)


Others in contention but I don't know too much about their program:
- DL Skymiles (also offering 120K but heard the redemption table is terrible)
- AC Aeroplan (also offering 120K but have not look at their redemption table yet)

For others, they are all only offering 85K miles or less, which is significantly less than what those 4 airlines are offering.

 

[JohnK]

I chose MileagePlus as their award rates to Asia are quite good and I can earn good MileagePlus miles with Hertz 1 day rentals and e-Rewards.

 

[kamchatsky]

I chose MileagePlus as their award rates to Asia are quite good and I can earn good MileagePlus miles with Hertz 1 day rentals and e-Rewards.

Hi JohnK, I thought about Mileage Plus as well. I would like to hear your recent experiences on *A carriers.

But here are my experience in the past on *A carriers that services Australia:

- SQ: Very restricted on what you can redeem, can only redeem non-77W/A380/A350 flights, and only open for booking within 14 days prior to departure.
- TG: F and J are very average these days, compare to most of the other Asian airlines.
- OZ: My last experience with OZ on J ICN-SYD was that they use a very old bird and no AVOD. I am not sure if this has changed.
- CA: My only experience was J HKG-PEK and it was a very average flight, no AVOD at all and the food was terrible. Even the CA lounge at HKG was shocking.
- UA: Not sure if they have improved a lot but last time I was on UA, they were still using overhead projectors.
- NZ: I had great experience with NZ J but I did notice that their standard has slipped . Not sure what happens now.
- NH: My only fight with them was Y cough-ITM, and it was terrible. However I know that their international flights are supposed to be a lot better than their domestic.
- BR: I have never tried them before.

I have been travelling in SQ and CX most of the time using Krisflyer and AA/CX/QF programs for the last few years.

Can you please let me know if things have changed in the *A world, whether the airlines have improved so much that I should consider *A carriers (excl. SQ) for Asia?

 

[JohnK]

Hi JohnK, I thought about Mileage Plus as well. I would like to hear your recent experiences on *A carriers.

My only experiences have been with SQ, TG and OZ. All 3 are OK but as you mention nothing special.

One stumbling block with MileagePlus is not being able to book SQ online but TG suits me as I need to get to BKK and then CNX and can combine these on the same award. I did use their business class product on 747 and A340 and was happy with both. I am not really interested in any other destinations at this stage so MileagePlus suits me.

 

[kamchatsky]

My only experiences have been with SQ, TG and OZ. All 3 are OK but as you mention nothing special.

One stumbling block with MileagePlus is not being able to book SQ online but TG suits me as I need to get to BKK and then CNX and can combine these on the same award. I did use their business class product on 747 and A340 and was happy with both. I am not really interested in any other destinations at this stage so MileagePlus suits me.

Thank you JohnK. I think I will need to play around the UA and NH *A Award engine to see if 4 J/F seats are available regularly, before I commit to UA. I know TG in the past are quite liberal on 4 seat awards, not sure now. NH, OZ, BR, NZ usually only release 2 seats max for each flight. I need 4 seats as I have 2 kids. So that's why normally I book via SQ and CX as they serve the most AU ports and can get 4 award seats by leaving Australia on different ports.

 

[zainman]

Interested in redeeming for the same package as well and am looking at 2 sets of transfers from Marriott. Maybe diversify a bit, I have plenty of Avios and AA you can buy quite easily. Also have AS mile through US credit card sign up bonuses but like you mention, restrictive for ex-Oz bookings... UA you can also pretty much buy any time using accelerator at 1.9CPM

Maybe wait till there's a bonus on transfers from hotels?

 

[Radio8tiv]

This is an interesting topic and I too am looking at one of these for a week stay in a cat 8 or 9 in NYC, I'm using MR points from 2x recent explorer signups so the way I figure it is I'm getting a week at a hotel for $800 which normally costs way more, the points are just a bonus, having said that however I was also stuck on where to put the points. Looking at my future travels plans I decided to go with SQ, I know we will get less points but I'm saving for F suites to Europe so a good little pickup.

On a similar but slightly of topic note, does anyone know or have any recommendations on which New York hotels come with the Exec lounges ? or do they all have them, I'll be SPG gold by then so would like to take full advantage.

 

[coolkid101]

On a similar but slightly of topic note, does anyone know or have any recommendations on which New York hotels come with the Exec lounges ? or do they all have them, I'll be SPG gold by then so would like to take full advantage.

Keen to hear opinions on this too. I asked a similar question on another thread. Marriott marquis is really popular but smack in the middle of times square so opinions are polarising. We were going to go for it anyway then found out about the new York edition which looks really promising, not fussed about elite benefits missing with Ritz properties since its new York so we'll be out most of the time and Starbucks is everywhere. We've however decided to go all out and book the Ritz Carlton central park. Our points are sure worthwhile on that.

 

[Haplo]

I put my pointed to UA for the simple reason that I already have quite a bit of QF via flying and credit cards so no point getting points in another OW program whetheras with UA and QF I can access inventories from both OW and *A.

 

[Radio8tiv]

Keen to hear opinions on this too. I asked a similar question on another thread. Marriott marquis is really popular but smack in the middle of times square so opinions are polarising. We were going to go for it anyway then found out about the new York edition which looks really promising, not fussed about elite benefits missing with Ritz properties since its new York so we'll be out most of the time and Starbucks is everywhere. We've however decided to go all out and book the Ritz Carlton central park. Our points are sure worthwhile on that.

they look like great properties but at tier3 and tier5 i think they will be a little much for me, the Ritz looks fantastic.
I'm still leaning towards the Residence central park (cat 8) or the marquis (cat 9). With the voucher one gets from Marriott for the seven night stay is that for the most basic room the hotel offers?

 

[rse43]

Just to add, Asia Miles is offering 30% bonus on miles transferred from Hotel program points before Feb 28 which means you get 110,500 instead of 85,000.

 

[kamchatsky]

I ended up converting 240K Amex Points to 120K SPG points, then to 360K Marriott Rewards points, and got the Marriott Travel Package with the following:

- 7 night Cat 8 certificate, which I used to book Sakura Tower Tokyo, Autograph Collection for 7 nights;
- 120000 British Airways Avios, which I used 80K Avios to get 4 * JL J NRT-HKG (5 hour flight) award redemption, with 40K Avios left.

This worked out really well as Avios is excellent for short and short-medium haul flights, especially great for intra-Asia travel from HKG and Japan. I could have convert them to AA or UA or AS miles but in this case, Avios fits the best for my immediate need.

 

[foggy]

I ended up converting 240K Amex Points to 120K SPG points, then to 360K Marriott Rewards points, and got the Marriott Travel Package with the following:

- 7 night Cat 8 certificate, which I used to book Sakura Tower Tokyo, Autograph Collection for 7 nights;
- 120000 British Airways Avios, which I used 80K Avios to get 4 * JL J NRT-HKG (5 hour flight) award redemption, with 40K Avios left.

This worked out really well as Avios is excellent for short and short-medium haul flights, especially great for intra-Asia travel from HKG and Japan. I could have convert them to AA or UA or AS miles but in this case, Avios fits the best for my immediate need.

I am thinking to do the same but just wanted to find out you booked with british airways from NRT - HKG? and its 20k per J ticket? how much were the taxes?

 

[futaris]

Hmm... Just doing a quick calculation if you buy maximum Marriott points:

625 USD = 50,000 Marriott Points.
1050 USD = 30,000 SPG Points = 90,000 Marriott Points

1675 USD = 140,000 Marriott Points.

Flight and Hotel Packages | Marriott Hotel Packages

Cat 8 Hotels are 40k Marriott Points per night. So ~3.5 nights for 1675 USD...
Cat 7 Hotels are 35k Marriott Points per night. So 4+1 nights for 1675 USD... Essentially 335 USD/night.

 

[kamchatsky]

I am thinking to do the same but just wanted to find out you booked with british airways from NRT - HKG? and its 20k per J ticket? how much were the taxes?

You can redeem 20K BA Avios for 1 * J NRT/HND-HKG on either CX or JL.

I paid 58 GBP for 4 tickets (2 adults and 2 child). Worked out about 14.5 GBP, or 23.55 AUD per person.

I would have preferred HND-HKG (especially my hotel is very close to HND), but JL only had 2 J available at 330 days out. So had to settle on NRT-HKG.

Yes I booked the ticket on British Airways Executive Club website. That is another good thing about BAEC, you can book JL online, much quicker than say AA, CX, QF etc where you will have ring up. You will beat just about anyone by booking it online.

Even 10K Avios for 1 * Y CX/JL NRT/HND-HKG is excellent value, consider that it is a 5 hour flight itself.

I intend to use Avios to redeem short haul flights from HKG or Japan in the future.

 

[futaris]

HKG-NRT/HND availability also opens up last minute too. In the last two weeks before a flight. At least that's my experience when redeeming Australia - Asia awards on AAdvantage.