Amex / American Express Reward Points

laprd

Hi,

I have 100,000 Amex Reward Points and I would like to spend on a hotel stay. I'm looking for the most cost effective way to transfer my Amex points to one of the hotel partner programmes. Not worth transferring to Avios as I can already fly with Virgin very cheaply.

You can choose from Starwood, Hilton HHonors and Club Carlson.

Any ideas would be much appreciated, I do not want to transfer to the wrong programme and regret it. I want to use points as efficiently as possible and get the best possible deal.

Thanks,

zerog

laprd wrote: »

Hi,

I have 100,000 Amex Reward Points and I would like to spend on a hotel stay. I'm looking for the most cost effective way to transfer my Amex points to one of the hotel partner programmes. Not worth transferring to Avios as I can already fly with Virgin very cheaply.

You can choose from Starwood, Hilton HHonors and Club Carlson.

Any ideas would be much appreciated, I do not want to transfer to the wrong programme and regret it. I want to use points as efficiently as possible and get the best possible deal.

Thanks,

So what's your question?

Find hotels in the place you want to go, and then see how many points they cost, work out which is the cheapest in MR points and then transfer.

Hilton hotels have recently become more expensive in terms of points.

guesswho2000

Unless you know where you want to stay (location wise) it's impossible to say.

You could transfer them at a value of one million pounds per point to the Hilton programme (you can't, obviously, I exaggerate) but if there isn't a Hilton Hotel then it's pointless (no pun intended!).

InsideInsurance

laprd wrote: »

Not worth transferring to Avios as I can already fly with Virgin very cheaply.

You can choose from Starwood, Hilton HHonors and Club Carlson.

How cheaply with Virgin? Is it worth using some at least to do the upgrade on Virgin with points? Plus Virgin flights are fairly limited locations in compared to BA & partners

Look where you are going and which hotels you like the look of. Starwoods dont tend to have that many hotels compared to Hilton but they do have a slightly higher rate of more interesting ones.

benroles

Remember you can also be sneaky and transfer the points to Virgin and from Virgin on to Priority Club (rate 1:1 and 1:1). This is what I've done before when Priority Cub stopped being an AMEX partner.

Priority Club covers Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites.

B.

[Deleted User]

Depends on the conversion ratio really. Club carlson is probably the cheapest hotel program for getting free stays - considerably less points are required than Hilton/Starwood etc but really it entirely depends on where you want to go and what hotel groups are represented.

GRM

Check out the Amex forum at www.flyertalk.com, this question is almost a FAQ there.

shapala

benroles wrote: »

Remember you can also be sneaky and transfer the points to Virgin and from Virgin on to Priority Club (rate 1:1 and 1:1). This is what I've done before when Priority Cub stopped being an AMEX partner.

Priority Club covers Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites.

B.

That's really interesting. Can you tell me what AmEx card you're using to do this, or if anyone else knows as I would like to do this?

I currently have the Priority Club Rewards Platinum credit card where I'm ticking over the points month by month and adding to my PC points balance nicely, but as of May I'm not willing to pay the £99 annual fee just to accrue points. Therefore, could I then just enroll for this AmEx card and do as you say by transferring the AmEx points balance to Virgin and consequently transfer those points to my PC account at a 1:1 point-for-point ratio?

Thanks for any assistance on this.

benroles

shapala wrote: »

That's really interesting. Can you tell me what AmEx card you're using to do this, or if anyone else knows as I would like to do this?

So I have the AmEx Gold Rewards card. When logged in to your AmEx online account click the 'view and redeem' button below your points balance and then click all rewards. You can then do a keyword search for 'Virgin' and it should return a result of 'Virgin Atlantic Points Transfer'. (If you are logged in already that link should take you straight there).

Firstly you have to register your Virgin Atlantic account number with AmEx (takes a couple of days) but once complete should then become active in your 'transferable partner accounts' list. You can then transfer (and it happens immediately from memory) your 100,000 points and you'll see 100,000 miles in your Virgin Atlantic account.

Next you need to call up Virgin Atlantic to ask for the transfer. Full details here (http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/en/gb/frequentflyer/fcpartners/hotels/holidayinn.jsp?bfSubmit1.y=11&bfSubmit1.x=24) but ultimately transfer a minimum of 10,000 points and in increments of 5,000 thereon. So you can easily transfer 100,000 points in one go to Priority Club. Credit there takes about 3-5 days.

And you are done!

Slightly long winded but definitely works. I've done it more than once. In fact, when you could get elite status from transferred points (no longer doable under PC rules) I used this route to get Platinum every year. In fact, my current Platinum status is from this route!

Anyway - good luck and let me know how you get on.

B.

mrchiggles

benroles wrote: »

Remember you can also be sneaky and transfer the points to Virgin and from Virgin on to Priority Club (rate 1:1 and 1:1). This is what I've done before when Priority Cub stopped being an AMEX partner.

Priority Club covers Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express and Candlewood Suites.

B.

Was the old conversion rate better than that or worse when you could do it direct?

benroles

Priority Club used to be a partner for Amex so you could do it directly. Again exchange was 1:1.

Now though just 'mule' through Virgin as I say. You still get 1:1 and 1:1 though so exactly the same.

Don't ever do the other way though - Priority Club to Virgin - the exchange rate is awful!

B.