Good morning everyone. A few days ago, I was in an interesting predicament. I found an awesome United Airlines award, but I did not have enough United Airlines miles to book the award. *gasp* Worse though, I did not have enough Chase Ultimate Reward Points either. *double gasp* I’m not sure if you have been in this situation before, but it is not fun. Here are some of the options I considered:
- Converting SPG points to United Airlines miles at the 2:1 transfer ratio
- Paying to transfer United Airlines miles from my grandparents’ account
- Buying United Airlines miles directly from United Airlines
- Begging United Airlines to “help a friend out”
Before I did anything drastic or embarrassing, I remembered that Marriott and United Airlines have a crossover relationship, whereby you can transfer miles into points or points into miles. Here is the Travel Rewards page on Marriott’s website. Marriott partners with many other airlines, but they have an exclusive relationship with United Airlines where you can get a “20% discount when you convert Marriott Rewards points to United MileagePlus award miles.”
I crunched the numbers and the transfer ratios range from 4:1 down to 2.24:1 (Marriott Points to United Airlines miles). Since I needed around 25,000 United Airlines miles, I selected the 4th option (56,000 Marriott Points = 25,000 United Airlines miles).
The transfer process is very simple. Select United Airlines from the airline drop down menu and then enter your United Airlines MileagePlus account number.
Review your United Airlines MileagePlus account number and click Submit.
All done. The United Airlines miles take 2-3 business days to deposit to your account (confirmed to me by a Ritz Carlton Concierge phone rep before I made the conversion request).
Here is the email confirmation for my transfer. I submitted the transfer request on 8/7/2015.
A few days later (I don’t know the exact date), the 25,000 United Airlines miles posted to my account. The date listed below is the date when the transfer was initiated, not when the miles posted to my United Airlines account. I was then able to book the United Airlines award ticket.
A few days ago, I wrote Merging Marriott and Ritz Carlton Accounts; Combining Points and Free Night Certificates, where I showed how to combine your Marriott and Ritz Carlton accounts and points. If you are sitting on a bunch of Ritz Carlton points from the JPMorgan Chase Ritz Carlton Credit Card, you may want to consider converting them to United Airlines. Assuming you have 140,000 Ritz Carlton Points and the 2.24:1 transfer ratio, you could have 62,500 United Airlines miles (if you could transfer every point out of your account). Depending on how much you value Marriott points and United Airlines miles, you might be better off converting some or all of your Marriott points to United Airlines miles.
If you have any questions, please leave a comment below. Have a great day everyone!
A related question… in terms of transferring Marriott points to Southwest, my understanding is that those points used to count toward the companion pass, but as the southwest site is written now, it seems pretty clear that they do not. Do you know anything about that?
Good morning Kate, I don’t know if Marriott to SWA counts as CP qualifying miles. I know that Hyatt to SWA did last time. Can you send over a small amount of Marriott to SWA miles and see if they count toward your CP?
HowCan you assure a 2.24 ratio. With a 140000 points. It does not work that way. There are fixed amounts to transfer, they do not add up to 140000
Hi Angela, sorry for the confusion. I said assuming you could transfer all your points at a 2.24:1 ratio, not that it was actually possible.
Thanks, makes sense.
I have 146k marriot points from the Chase Ritz card, when i look at the transfer page, the website doesn’t allow you to transfer all the points. It shows max of 120k marriot points to united.
How can you transfer 1400 or 146k marriot points?
You would need to break up the conversion into multiple increments.
Great post, Grant! I might use this option since I only have Silver status, which is not a good status to stay at Marriotts/RC.
How many Marriott points do you have?
Is there any validity to this:
http://runningwithmiles.boardingarea.com/transfer-56k-marriott-points-into-31k-united-miles-more-good-converions/
Let me check it out and I’ll get back to you.
Edit: I don’t see where the increased transfer ratios show up. I see the same rates that I used a few days ago.
You won’t see the rates on the Marriott side. It is a bonus given by United after the transfer. It is a 25% bonus on all hotel points transferred into United miles.
But, you do need to register for the promotion on the United website before the transfer to get the bonus 25%.
Gotcha, wish that promo was announced a few days earlier.