You Can Now Convert Cathay Asia Miles to Marriott Points

Most hotel loyalty programs offer the ability to transfer points to airline frequent flyer programs. This feature is rarely offered in the other direction, but there are a few exceptions.

It’s already possible to convert Virgin Atlantic Flying Club points and Finnair Plus points to IHG One Rewards points. It’s also possible to transfer United MileagePlus miles into Marriott Bonvoy. And miles with around 8 frequent flyer programs such as Flying Blue, Aegean Miles+Bonus and LATAM Pass can be converted into Accor ALL points.

Cathay Pacific’s frequent flyer program is also now part of this exclusive club of airlines that lets members convert their frequent flyer miles into hotel points.

Cathay now offers its members the possibility to convert Asia Miles into Marriott Bonvoy points. But, like with most options to convert airline miles into hotel points, the conversion rate is so poor that you probably shouldn’t take up this offer!

With this partnership, 2 Cathay Asia Miles can be converted to 1 Marriott Bonvoy point.

There’s a minimum conversion of 2,000 Asia Miles per transaction (worth 1,000 Marriott Bonvoy points), and you must transfer in increments of 500 Asia Miles. There is a conversion limit of 240,000 Asia Miles per person, per day (this is the same limit that applies to transfers in the opposite direction from Marriott Bonvoy to Asia Miles).

In the other direction, Marriott Bonvoy members can transfer their points to Asia Miles at a 3:1 rate. There’s also a 25% bonus on transfers of 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, meaning you would get 25,000 Asia Miles in return for 60,000 Bonvoy points.

If you converted those 25,000 Asia Miles back to Marriott Bonvoy, you would receive 12,500 Bonvoy points. That’s a loss in value of 75%!

To give you an idea, 25,000 Asia Miles is enough to book a one-way Cathay Pacific Business Class flight on a route such as Singapore-Hong Kong. But 12,500 Marriott Bonvoy points may only be enough to book a relatively cheap hotel room for a night.

This new way to redeem Asia Miles could be useful for some people. But unless you have an excess amount of Asia Miles and a specific need for a small quantity Marriott Bonvoy points, this is unlikely to work out to be great value.

In general, the ability to transfer points between loyalty programs can be very useful. For example, the unique option to convert Virgin Australia Velocity points into Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles – a program feature not offered by other airlines – is highly valued.

But the value needs to stack up, and the conversions from Asia Miles into Marriott Bonvoy don’t really do that for most people.

Korean Air SKYPASS transfers to Marriott Bonvoy

Update: Since the launch of Asia Miles transfers to Marriott Bonvoy, Korean Air SKYPASS has also added this feature. However, the value is similarly poor with two SKYPASS miles converting to one Marriott Bonvoy point.

You can leave a comment or discuss this topic on the Australian Frequent Flyer forum.

Matt Graham

The editor of Australian Frequent Flyer, Matt's passion for travel has taken him to over 90 countries… with the help of frequent flyer points, of course!
Matt's favourite destinations (so far) are Germany, Brazil & Kazakhstan. His interests include aviation, economics & foreign languages, and he has a soft spot for good food and red wine.

You can connect with Matt by posting on the Australian Frequent Flyer community forum and tagging @AFF Editor.