As a travel hacker, redeeming points is always a bit of a trade-off. I am a firm believer that it’s always a good idea to diversify your points across a wide variety of different programs. It does no good to have a million American AAdvantage miles, if only Delta can get you where you’re going.
But all those tradeoffs sometimes come with a downside – it is hard to decide between 2 options, and sometimes that causes problems
(SEE ALSO: The worst feeling in the world: Screwing up a travel booking)
(SEE ALSO: 10,000 SPG or 50,000 Hilton points: which would you rather spend?)
My Seattle flight dilemma
We need to fly the eight of us from Seattle to Cincinnati for a trip next year. Originally, we were looking at using Alaska miles to make the trip.
But because it’s just a one-way trip, Alaska charges 25,000 miles since they don’t offer one-way awards on Delta (even though Delta now does)
Delta does have the availability at only 12,500 miles per person
Transferring miles to Delta from partners
So now I’m in a situation where I need to transfer some miles to Delta. Even though I have about 250,000 Alaska miles (thank you Bank of America!), that doesn’t do me any good, because I don’t want to spend 200,000 of those miles when I could spend only 100,000.
The 2 partners that transfer miles to Delta directly are Starwood hotels and American Express Membership Rewards
Another option is using Citi ThankYou Points or Chase Ultimate Rewards to transfer to one of Delta’s partners (like Air France, Korean Air or Virgin Atlantic), though my Chase balance is getting low because I just redeemed over 100,000 points to book the rest of this trip
So…. 60,000 SPG points or 75,000 American Express Membership Rewards?
A nice benefit of Starwood points is that even though they are nominally hotel points, they can transfer to a variety of airline partners (including Delta). PLUS, for each 20,000 points that you transfer, you get a 5,000 point bonus, so 20,000 SPG points becomes 25,000 airline miles.
I have about 25,000 Delta miles between Carolyn and I, so I would need about 75,000 points to transfer to Delta to get the 100,000 SkyMiles we’d need for 8 of these tickets.
60,000 SPG points is fewer points, but it would about deplete my current SPG point balance. 75,000 Membership Rewards would put a healthy dent in my American Express Membership Rewards balance as well, but those are at least a little easier to earn. I originally had sort of mentally “reserved” my SPG points for a Disney stay at the Swan / Dolphin hotel, but I’m not sure that’s going to happen any time soon (or even if that’s the best way to stay Disney).
So what do you think? Should we transfer 60,000 SPG points or 75,000 American Express points?
- Ever been bit by no Delta one ways with Alaska miles? It stinks.
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- Would you rather transfer 60K SPG points, or 75K American Express points?
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- Where our family of 8 is going for 40,000 miles and $93 (it's further than you think!)
- Delta just SPLIT UP my family!
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Use the SPG. When Marriott takes over those points will not be worth nearly as much as they are now.
Considering that SPG points might be significantly devalued once the Marriott-Starwood merger is completed in summer 2016, I would be trying to use up the SPG point you have–unless you expect another use for them before summer 2016 that is higher priority. Your trip requires fewer SPG points than Amex MR points, and the fact is that SPG points might not be able to be transferred to airlines after summer 2016 (or even sooner). So I’d use the SPG points when you can!
My husband and I have tons of SPG points, which we’ve been burning fast on hotel awards and via transfers to airlines for flights we need next year–and in some cases, to simply pad our airline mile accounts for the airlines we most fly that accept SPG point transfers (AA and LH, most notably). That way, when the merger is completed with Marriott, we are not stuck with so many SPG points that are devalued.
Transfer MR to Delta. Save SPG for AAdvantage or any niche needs (e.g. Lanpass, Airberlin, etc).
I think that Skymiles, AC, and SQ are probably tied for the typical “best” use of MR, while DL is definitely not the top use of SPG points.
There’s still a long ways out before SPG folds into Marriott Rewards. Between now and then, there could be another 20k SPG –> 30k AAdvantage transfer bonus.
If MR points are easier to earn, go with those. Presumably Marriott will give some notice before devaluing, so you could turn the SPG points into some other currency, if need be, when we know more.
If you are “on the fence” about which to use, then why not use a combination of BOTH? Just be sure to redeem your SPG points as a multiple of exactly 20K to get the additional 5K bonus. But I would definitely do the redemption as 100% MR if you think that in the future you won’t have access to MR to airline transfers because you won’t have one of the annual fee AMEX cards that allow that option.
Hmm that’s an interesting thought – I hadn’t thought to “hedge” my bets like that
Curious why you aren’t using avios?
Using Avios would mean 2 things
1) Finding availability on Alaska and/or American (doesn’t exist as far as I can tell)
2) It would cost at least 14,500 Avios to fly SEA-CVG, instead of the 12,500 Delta Skymiles
Don’t forget that you have to PAY a fee (not huge, but still…) to transfer MR points to Delta….