The Complete Guide to Transferring Hotel Points to Airline Miles

As I just spent some time comparing hotel loyalty programs, I decided to also look at the opportunities to transfer hotel rewards points. This post contains a simple table for each of the six major hotel chains and their airline transfer partners. (I’ve done this before, but it is two years out-of-date.)

Update: You may be interested in trying a new tool I created, the Points Transfer Calculator, which will help you explore all your transfer options and calculate the number of points you can expect to receive.

Many people like to transfer their hotel rewards points to different airline loyalty programs to make it easier to book a free flight. This has two advantages: (1) You’ll earn miles faster, making it easier to book high value rewards. (2) You’ll sometimes get a better return with airline redemptions since these are based on distance and not cost. Contrast this with hotel loyalty programs that have added many more tiers and enabling them to better match the cost of a hotel with a higher award cost.

I’ll save more of the analysis for future posts. For now, I’ve at least gathered all the data. You’ll find the minimum number of points required to make a transfer and the number of miles you’ll receive.I also created a new metric –“MPP” or “miles per point” — that represents the number of miles you’ll earn in return for transferring 1,000 hotel rewards points. This makes it easier to compare programs when one has a minimum transfer of 2,500 points and the other has a minimum of 10,000. However, MPP says nothing about value; read the next section to learn why.

Use these links to jump down to the program of interest. Otherwise, the very first table summarizes the transfer options according to MPP (including bonuses for transferring large blocks of points.)

• Starwood Preferred Guest
• Hilton HHonors
• Hyatt Gold Passport
• IHG Rewards
• Club Carlson
• Marriott Rewards

Which Program Is the Best Transfer Partner?

To give you a sense of where I’m going next with this information, take American Airlines as an example. You could earn as many as 1,250 miles for each 1,000 Starpoints transferred, or 357 miles for each 1,000 Marriott Rewards points. Which is better?

Well, I think Starpoints are worth about 2.5 cents each, so $25 in points gets me 1,250 miles — a “cost” of 2 cents per mile. Marriott Rewards points are worth maybe 0.7 cents each, so $7 in points gets me 357 miles — just under 2 cents per mile.

It’s a slightly better deal to exchange Marriott Rewards points for American Airlines miles rather than SPG Starpoints. Many people would have picked Starwood by default because of its reputation as a good transferable currency, but Marriott is a competitive alternative.

I’d eventually like to integrate this table with my award chart search tool and custom valuations to help you find the best way to accumulate the miles you need for your next award flight.

Starwood Preferred Guest

In general, the minimum transfer amount is 2,500 points. This minimum is reduced to 1,500 points for SPG Gold members and waived entirely for SPG Platinum members. You can receive 25% more miles when you transfer a block of 20,000 Starpoints (not reflected here). Read more details about Starwood’s airline transfer program.

Hilton HHonors

The minimum transfer amount is 10,000 points unless otherwise indicated. Read more details about Hilton’s airline transfer program.

Hyatt Gold Passsport

The minimum transfer amount is 5,000 points unless otherwise indicated. Additional points may be transferred in increments of 1,250. You can receive 25% more miles when you transfer a block of 50,000 Gold Passport points (not reflected here). Read more details about Hyatt’s airline transfer program.

IHG Rewards

IHG Rewards allows you to transfer blocks of 10,000 points and in most cases awards 2,000 miles for each partner. The exceptions are El Al and Air New Zealand, which use very different accounting methods. Read more details about IHG’s airline transfer program.

Club Carlson

Club Carlson allows you to transfer blocks of 2,000 points and in all cases awards 200 miles for each partner. Read more details about Club Carlson’s airline transfer program.

Marriott Rewards

Marriott Rewards is the only program with a tiered transfer system (although Hyatt and Starwood both provide a 25% bonus on large transfers). What this means is that you can transfer 10K, 20K, 30K, or 70K points and will receive more miles per point when you transfer larger blocks. There’s another option for transferring 140K points, but because the ratio is the same as if you transfer 70K, I saw no reason to repeat a row in what is already a large table. Read more details about Marriott Rewards’ airline transfer program.