Transferring points to miles is still – in some cases – one of the more lucrative redemption options and today I’d like to write about my experience transferring one 60k lot from Marriott to ANA Mileage Club.
I made this transfer to cushion my ANA account in order to redeem one of the very attractive Round The World tickets in Business Class (115k) sometime soon and used up my Amex MR points for the rest.
Transferring Marriott points to airline miles can be done in two different ways:
- 3000 Points to 1000 Miles or 60,000 Points to 25,000 Miles (5,000 Miles bonus)
- Marriott Travel Packages in two sizes, 55,000 or 110,000 Miles + 7 Nights Hotel
Some airlines have slightly different transfer ratios (such as the 10% Bonus for United Mileage Plus) but since this is about ANA Mileage Club the standard conversion rates applied.
After transferring American Express Membership Rewards to the account I needed another 26,000 miles in order to book the 115,000 miles Business Class RTW.
This required 63,000 Marriott Points which I transferred on Saturday the 25th of June:
I have done some reading how long this would take to be credited and the general consensus seemed to be that it would be up to 4 days (assuming business days).
In my case that was not the case and it took substantially longer, it just showed up yesterday on July 5:
It took ten days in total for me and in the meanwhile some of the flights I wanted to book disappeared. Of course that’s always the risk and in my case it’s not really a problem but still be aware that the transfer time can vary greatly and you have no way of speeding it up.
American Express transfers usually post to ANA within 2-3 days after the initiating the transaction.
Keep in mind that the account only shows the transaction date but not the date the miles hit your account.
As far as value is concerned I consider ANA Miles relatively high up in the food chain. It’s rather difficult to obtain them other than through flying and crediting them to AMC, transferring American Express (USA) or by carrying another ANA Credit Card.
There are some nice sweet spots in the ANA award chart such as Business and First Class round trips as well as the Business Class Round The World award.
The downsides: You can’t book one way awards with ANA and the surcharges can be very high especially when booking specific airlines that are notorious for high charges, especially Lufthansa Group airlines and THAI. ANA flights have moderate charges but not cheap, you still talk about $120 per long haul segment.
Conclusion
I transferred 63,000 Marriott Points to ANA Mileage Club miles and it took a total of 10 days to be processed. Your experience may vary but considering there is this magic number of “4 days” swirling around online I thought it’s worth a post that this isn’t necessarily an accurate time frame.
Why did I think this is worthwhile? Because I hardly find hotels where I feel I get value for the points anymore since most worthwhile Marriott properties are now way “up there”. Even a random property around LAX Airport is a Cat 5 nowadays which is absolutely crazy but I found that any decent city property is 50,000-60,000 points if you want a 4.5*-5* hotel. Most of the time you can just pay cash rates of ~ $250/night and based on that I feel like I get a much higher value using the points for airline miles that are otherwise hard to obtain.
