Should You Buy Marriott Points On Sale Today To Take Advantage Of American, Etihad, Or United Transfer Offers?

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Ending today, Marriott is selling points for 0.875 cents each instead of the normal 1.25 cents each.

50K points will cost $437.50 instead of $625. You can normally purchase 50K points per year, but if you buy points today you can purchase up to 100K points in 2 transactions.

I’d value Marriott points at about 0.65-0.75 cents each, so this is still more than they’re normally worth.

However there are currently transfer bonuses for transfers to American, Etihad, and United.

  • 60K Marriott points would cost $525 and would net 31,250 American miles after the bonus, or a cost of 1.68 cents per mile.
    • 32.5K AA miles is enough for a one-way flight in Cathay Pacific business class between JFK and Vancouver, at least until the best flight within North America is killed in March. First class will set you back 50K miles.
    • 50K AA miles is enough for a one-way flight in Qantas A380 first class between Australia and Hong Kong, including free spa services in the awesome Qantas first class lounge (I’m pretty sure the facial my wife got at the Qantas first class spa before our flight to Hong Kong is what my wife’s reminisces about the most when we talk about our AAdvantage round-the-world award we took back in 2010/2011 😀 )
    • 75K AA miles is enough for a one-way flight between the US and South Africa in Qatar’s award winning business class QSuites.
    • 115K AA miles is enough for a one-way flight in Etihad A380 first class between the US and the Maldives, including private suites with a separate bed and a shower onboard the flight.
  • 60K Marriott points would cost $525 and would net 30K Etihad miles after the bonus, or a cost of 1.75 cents per mile.
    • 90K Etihad miles is enough for a round-trip business class flight between North America and Morocco that normally costs more than $5,000.
  • 60K Marriott points would cost $525 and would net 35,750 United miles after the bonus, or a cost of 1.47 cents per mile.

If you have a specific use for the miles or if you need miles to have enough to redeem for an award in the short-term, it can definitely be worth buying points. However it’s never worth buying points without short-term plans to redeem them.

Will you buy points with this promotion?

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7 Comments On "Should You Buy Marriott Points On Sale Today To Take Advantage Of American, Etihad, Or United Transfer Offers?"

All opinions expressed below are user generated and the opinions aren’t provided, reviewed or endorsed by any advertiser or DansDeals.

Points Transfer

Doesn’t it take Marriott a while to transfer their points to airline points? I remember needing to wait a while for my JetBlue transfer.

Charles

How do you get the 120k points in business round trip? Looking for nyc-lhr in March and more than 155k for business. Any suggestions?

tassojunior

Don’t forget Alaska ! An otherwise hard mileage to acquire.

I just got a 1-way Hawaii to SFO, free stopover 4 days, then on to DC for 15K for next week.

Me

Is there any way to use the Free Night Award (creditcard) via the app. I can only use it by logging in on the website.

Shulamis

What about to Israel, looking to transfer points for a trip to Israel in 1.5 yrs… I should wait, right

MH

Can you do another post about using AA miles on partner airlines if one is just exploring uses for AA miles vs having a destination in mind? I cant seem to find a working strategy (also have you seen the new 10K no-change rewards flights AA is offering?)

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