Virgin America is Marriott’s latest airline partner. When the MegaMiles promotion was announced early December, Virgin America wasn’t in the list of participating airlines.
If you would like to participate to this promotion, you need to choose miles instead of points as your earnings preference and make Virgin Elevate as the partner. You also need to register for the MegaMiles promotion. You can do this at the Promotion Central when signed in on your Marriott Rewards account.
During the MegaMiles promotion, which runs from January 1st to April 30th, you can earn 2000 bonus Elevate points starting from your second stay. The maximum number of bonus points that one can earn is 50000. The promo thus is capped to 26 Marriott family of hotels stays.
Does it make sense to credit stays to Virgin’s Elevate program? It depends of the way you are planning to use the airline miles/points. Elevate program is very straightforward. The number of Elevate bonus required for a free flight directly correlates with the price. The Elevate point is worth exactly $0.0215.
Here are exactly the same flights using money or points. The fare, excluding taxes of $21.60, is $328 and the number of Elevate points required for the exactly the same itinerary is 15257 + $5 for tax.
When the air fares are low the number of required points, as is in this case, is better than what one can expect from the legacy carriers like United and American, both of whom would require 25K miles for such itinerary. Both American and United limit the number of reward seat available per flights using revenue management tools.
But, when we look at how many points/miles would a domestic first/business class require on VX, UA, and AA, there is quite a difference. For comparison purposes, I have chosen Los Angeles to New York route. The United’s and AA’s business class is comparable to Virgin’s first class on this route. Both United and American also offer separate first class cabin.
Virgin would require from 78326 to 106465 Elevate points for oneway Los Angeles to New York. The saver award on both United and American would be 25K miles and unrestricted 50K in business class.
Here are the regular Virgin Elevate earnings for Marriott stays:
1 Elevate point per US dollar spent on all qualifying charges:
- JW Marriott®
- Autograph Collection®
- Renaissance® Hotels
- Marriott® Hotels & Resorts
- Marriott Vacation Club®
1 Elevate point per US dollar spent on room rate only:
- The Ritz-Carlton®
- EDITIONSM
1 Elevate point per two US dollars spent on room rate only:
- AC Hotels by Marriott
- Courtyard by Marriott®
- Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott®
- SpringHill Suites by Marriott®
- Residence Inn by Marriott®
- TownePlace Suites by Marriott®
- Marriott Executive Apartments®
For comparison purposes here is how many miles you would earn crediting to United (AA is no longer partner with Marriott Rewards):
2 airline miles per US$ spent on all qualifying charges:
- JW Marriott®
- Autograph Collection®
- Renaissance® Hotels
- Marriott® Hotels & Resorts
- Marriott Vacation Club®
2 airline miles per US$ spent on room rate only:
- The Ritz-Carlton®
- EDITIONSM
1 airline mile per US$ spent on room rate:
- Courtyard by Marriott®
- AC Hotels by Marriott®
- Fairfield Inn & Suites by Marriott®
- SpringHill Suites by Marriott®
- Residence Inn by Marriott®
- TownePlace Suites by Marriott®
- Marriott Executive Apartments®
Conclusion
Personally, I wouldn’t credit Marriott stays to Virgin’s Elevate because I tend to use all my miles and points for international business and first class tickets. The value of Virgin Elevate points is capped at 2.15 cents per point when redeeming for Virgin America flights.
It can make sense to credit to Virgin, if the revenue flights that you would like to buy using Elevate points are inexpensive. The transcontinental flights in domestic fist class are very expensive using points on Virgin compared to legacy carriers.
If you do the 26 stays during the promotional period, you would earn $1075 in Elevate points that you can use towards airfare. This figure doesn’t include the regular dollar based earnings.
