New Transfer Bonus: Get 25% More American Miles When You Transfer These Hotel Points

Starting this past Sunday (April 15), American launched a hotel transfer bonus. While there is really just one great option, there are several hotels that you can get the bonus miles from.

Get 25% More American Miles When You Transfer These Hotel Points

Link: American Airline Hotel Transfer Bonus Registration

Transfer Bonus Details

Participating Hotel Partners with Examples

• Best Western – 5,000 points = 1,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
• IHG – 10,000 points = 2,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
• Marriott – 10,000 points = 2,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 20,000 points = 5,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 30,000 points = 10,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 70,000 points = 25,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 140,000 points = 50,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
• Radisson – 2,000 points = 200 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 10,000 points = 1,000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • 50,000 points = 5,000 miles + 25 % bonus
  • 100,000 points = 10,000 miles + 25% bonus
• SPG – 2,5,000 points = 2,5000 AA miles + 25% bonus
  • For every 20,000 Starpoints transferred within the same transaction, you’ll earn 5,000 bonus Starpoints (but you can only transfer 79,999 Starpoints per 24 hours)

Bonus Details

• Valid from April 15, 2018 at 12:01 a.m. Central Time through May 31, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. Central Time (“the Promotion Period”)
• AAdvantage^® members must preregister at [website] and opt in to receive marketing communications for the opportunity to receive bonus American Airlines AAdvantage^® miles (“Offer”). To qualify for this AAdvantage^® 25% bonus mile offer, member must initiate the AAdvantage^® mileage conversions with participating eligible
• AAdvantage^®program hotel participants (“Hotel Partner(s)”) during the Promotion Period, must provide their
• AAdvantage^® number, and must be in good standing in the AAdvantage^® program.
• Members can convert multiple times with multiple Hotel Partners to earn bonus points.
• Conversions for hotel and air packages from Hotel Partners are not included for this offer.
• Conversions that take place before a member is registered for the offer will not count toward the offer.

Using SPG Points to Receive Marriott’s Hotel + Air Packages

The chart for AA miles

Even though you will not get the bonus when using hotel and air packages, if you are going to transfer around 90,000 Starpoints during this promo, you should definitely consider the usual Marriott Hotel + Air package.

Because you can transfer SPG points to Marriott (at a 1:3 ratio), it always pays to see what kind of benefit you could get by transferring those SPG points over and using a Hotel + Air package. To get the bottom package of 270,000 Marriott points (which gives 120,000 AA miles and 7 nights at a Category 1 – 5 hotel), you will need 90,000 Starpoints to get started.

Which Should You Do?

If you were to transfer those 90,000 Starpoints to American through this AA transfer bonus, you would end up with 137,500 AA miles – or 17,500 more miles than this regular Hotel and Air package.

Once transferred to Marriott, you can go ahead and call Marriott (800-321-7396) and book a package. They will transfer your points to American Airlines and issue you a certificate for a Category 1 -5 hotel for a 7 night stay. Now, you get 7 nights at a hotel plus 120,000 AA miles. This means you get 10,000 fewer AA miles than you would with the SPG transfer bonus and you need to spend 10,000 more SPG points. So, how is this better?

For one thing, you are essentially trading those miles you would have received for 7 nights at hotel. Even though a Category 5 is still not high-end, you can still get huge value. If I had not made a mistake, I could have easily received over $1,200 in value from that 7 night stay! That is a lot more value than you would get with the extra AA miles!

But, Wait! There’s More…

Finally, there is one other little tidbit. Per zXFDz over at reddit, you can actually call Marriott and get a refund for those 7 nights if you would rather not use them. That will put 45,000 Marriott points back in your account which you can leave there or transfer back to SPG for 15,000 Starpoints. So, if you do this, you will have received 120,000 AA miles for only 75,000 SPG points – a much better deal than the SPG transfer bonus!