Frequent Miler on the Air - Which Marriott Bonvoy transfer partners are best? | Question of the Week Ep11 | 8-2-26

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

Which Marriott Bonvoy transfer partners are best? Podcast listener "FlyerDad" asked us this question recently, writing:Marriott points are truly the most valuable airline currency given the number of programs they transfer to. But I have never heard you guys discuss who their most valuable transfer partners are, as you do for all the other transferable currencies. Would you consider a podcast on the "forgotten" but most valuable transferable reward points in the game?We’ve been answering a reader or listener question at the end of each Frequent Miler on the Air podcast episode. Now, we’ve turned the question of the week into its own weekly episode. Tune in every Sunday at 5pm for our Question of the Week podcast. And if you have your own question you’d like to submit, you can send it to [e-mail] in this episode:Check out all of our other travel podcasts from around the worldThis podcast is part of Voyascape, a podcast network that brings together the world's best travel podcasts. You can find all of our podcasts from around the world at Voyascape.com. If you are interested in advertising or sponsored content on any of our shows you can find out more at the link below.Voyascape Podcast Network

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world atvoyescape.com. This week's question of the week, which Marriott Bonvoy transfer partners are the best? So a listener writes in to make a bold statement and ask a question. Listener Flyer Dad writes, Marriott points are truly the most valuable airline currency given the number of programs they transfer or two. But I've never heard you guys discuss who their most valuable transfer partners are, as you do for all the other transferable currencies. Would you consider a podcast on the

forgotten but most valuable transferable reward points in the game? So, Greg, what do you say? Okay. Yeah, I mean, Flyer Dad is right in that Marriott has a fantastic long list of transfer partners. Like, you can transfer your Marriott points to a huge number of airline miles. But transfers aren't one to one. And it's not even close to one to one. So when you're comparing to things like Amix membership rewards, Chase Sultan rewards,

things like that, you know, saying that it's best because it is the most transfer partners, when most transfers are three to one, you know, would you call it the most valuable airline currency? I mean, come on. That's a stretch, liar dad. that's a stretch. But, but you win because you got us to talk about it. So, so we are going to talk

about which are the best. And for a lot of people, hopefully, or maybe this is news, and you may not be aware of this. So hopefully there's a chance to at least learn that it's an option and something that's out there. So let's go over the basics. As Greg said, Marriott Bonvoy points transfer to many different airline programs, most of them are three to one, which means like 3,000 Marriott Bonvoy points become 1,000 airline miles. But they kick in 5,000 bonus miles for every 60,000 marriott bonvoy points that you transfer to many of their partners, not quite all of them, but to many of them. So for the most part, we would consider this with that type of transfer. You'd be transferring 60,000 Marriott points to become 25,000 airline mile.

for most of the airline partners. Now, there are a couple of notable exceptions. I said most several times and kind of emphasize that. That's because United gets 5,000 bonus miles. So when you transfer 60,000 Marriott points, you actually get 30,000 United Mileage Plus miles. On the flip side, there's no 5,000 mile bonus for American, Avianca, or Delta.

So if you transfer 60,000 marriott points to any of those, you're only going to get 20,000 airline miles in those programs. Air New Zealand has a really. wacky ratio. Not even worth talking about because once I went through their, their partner award chart, there's just nothing really of value there, I think, for most people. So that's another odd ball, although they do kind of get the 5K bonus, but it's not worth your time. Transfers usually aren't worth it if you're earning most of your Marriott points from spend on a credit card. If you're earning it like two Marriott points per dollar and you're transferring three Marriott points to

get one airline mile. That's just not a good deal for the most part. So if you're primarily earning your Marriott points from credit card spend, it's probably not at all worth transferring those points to airlines in most cases. Now, there are some exceptions, you know, maybe you need to top off for a really valuable award or that kind of thing. There are situations where it might make sense or you have some orphaned points left over. But for the most part, that's not going to be worthwhile. However, it could be worth considering if you're looking at a Marriott welcome bonus and you're like, well, I don't stay Marriott anyway, but I would take this welcome bonus and turn it into these useful airline miles for me. Or if you're traveling a lot, like if you're a traveling salesperson or you

you have some job where you're constantly on the road and somebody else is paying for your Marriott stays and you're just earning tons and tons of Marriott points and you can't use all the Marriott points that you're earning. Or maybe you're already using them for hotel stays, but you've got a ton of access Marriott points, well then, then it starts to become much more, I think, attractive to consider transferring them to airline programs. And I mean, I think you probably feel the same way, right? Yeah, yeah. And, you know, if you're going to be considering transferring your Marriott points to airline programs, I think the most interesting thing is to look at where Marriott has unique transfer partners, you know, because that's where you can't do better.

by earning transferable points from, you know, that transfer one to one to airline miles, which is usually the better way to go about things. But if in the cases where Marriott's the only practical option to get those airline miles, then there definitely can be situations where, hey, it absolutely makes sense to make that transfer. Yeah, absolutely.

And worth a note, in the past, transfers from Marriott to airlines were slow. Now, they may have updated that neither of us has made a transfer from Marriop, envoy to an airline program in quite a while. It's possible that some are faster and some are slower, but be aware that it's not necessarily instant. We definitely don't, couldn't say with confidence that transfers will be fast or instant because they have not always been.

Okay. So to Greg's point, I think we should talk about the unique transfer partners because Marriott does have some that you can't earn, with the traditional transferable currencies like Amex or Chase or City or built or even Rove Miles or some that are not partners with any of those other things. Now, there are a handful of these, but I think really let's focus on the notable ones of the ones that you couldn't get anywhere else. And so the first of those, and I think maybe the most useful in a lot of cases, is Aegean. So Aegean Airlines is a Greek airline. They don't fly to and from the United States. They

do fly a bunch around Europe into Greece, and they're a Star Alliance airline. So you can use their miles to fly on any Star Alliance airline. And they have a couple of notable sweet spots. First up, 55,000 miles one way in business class between North America and Europe. So again, that's flying Star Alliance carriers. I don't know whether or not they pass along surcharges off the top of my head, so they may not be useful for Liptonza Group flights. I'm not sure. But there are a number of Star Alliance carriers like United and Air Canada Aeroplane. They're that don't have surcharges to pass along in most cases or some that have moderate surcharges like Lot Polish. So there are plenty of uses where 55,000 miles in business class would be a

pretty good deal to get to and from Europe. And then economy class redemptions on United or business class redemptions on United within North America, they can be a good deal. So it's 12,500 miles each way in economy or 21,000 miles each way in business from North America to North America, what I think makes this perhaps slightly more notable. You might say, well, it's, that's more or less similar to what a lot of other programs charge. But what I think makes this a little notable is that their definition of North America is broader than most programs. They include most of the Caribbean in the definition of North America. And they include Greenland in the definition of North America. And that may be the case for some other programs. I hadn't really

thought about it until I saw it spelled out in their award chart. But United does offer a seasonal non-star, or a seasonal nonstop from New York to Greenland. It's probably seasonable also, but a seasonal flight from New York to Greenland. So I don't know whether they release awards based to partners, but if they do, 12.5K in economy is probably a good deal on that flight. I would think so. I mean, those kind of specialty flights are often, you know, crazy expensive. That's really interesting.

That they include Greenland, but not Hawaii, I take it. no Hawaii had it was a separate spot and it wasn't wildly notable not only was it not wildly notable but United just doesn't release a lot of awards based from Hawaii to partners anymore and I don't know the Greenland is a better you know a better option or a more more likely to find option in fact it probably isn't since it's only a seasonal flight but it stuck stuck out at me but I think Turkish is still going to be a better deal to get to and from Hawaii if you could actually find those flights of Maybe they're easier to find with Aegean than they are with, you know, with Turkish or whatever, but I couldn't say for sure. So it didn't look like a particularly notable deal. Okay. So A Gian is a good example, one that where you can't transfer from other, you know, one-to-one transfer partners. So Marriott could be a good use if you find a good use of those miles. What else are there any others that are worth considering? Yeah, two others, I would say. So Copa Airlines, Copa's based in Panama City. They used to be, I think, partly. owned by United or Continental. The logo looks very similar to the old Continental logo,

but they're not anymore. So Copa is a unique airline there. I think they're Star Alliance, but they do also partner with like Air France, KLM Flying Blue. It kind of makes it interesting. But a couple of spots that stood out to me for Copa was that it's 15,000 miles each way for a safer economy class flight from North America to northern South America and much of Central America and the Caribbean. And that's decent. It may or may not be the best, depending on where you're starting and ending point is. But in some cases, I imagine that that's a pretty good deal. And then 25,000 each way to southern South America, that's not necessarily wildly good. You can probably do better with Avianca Life Miles in a lot of situations, even flying Copa with Avianca Life

Miles. But I pointed this out because there may be times where it is a better deal to use Copa, though the other thing that stuck out at me about this is that was the price to Southern South America, but not to South America Dreams, which doesn't sound like a region name, but is. South America Dreams? They have that listed in the awards card to something else? They do. Haven't you been dreaming of Buenos Aires and Sao Paulo and Montevideo? Because that's, there were four airport codes that were South America dreams that weren't even the Southern most or like I thought maybe Patagonia'd be in there because it's just expensive to get to usually. But no, it's just like four select airports that are kind of like Argentina and Brazil

and the rest of Southern South America, I guess. They're just like, we just want to charge more for these for whatever reason. Yeah, for whatever reason. So much out of that. And I add that in here to say I did not comb through region definitions with like a fine-tooth comb on some of these programs that are lesser known. So those region definitions can sometimes present opportunities for great deals. So maybe there are some out there where you could find a particularly good deal to snag.

But you always have to watch out for that. Your idea of a region might not match the program's idea of a region, because I certainly would have put Buenos Aires in Southern South America if you'd asked me. I would not have put it in South America dreams. Okay. And then the last one, Virgin Australia. velocity. This is one that they have a distance-based chart and they certainly can be useful for flying domestically within Australia on Virgin Australia, though I would note that Air Canada

Aeroplane can also be good for flying domestically on Virgin Australia. So you'd probably have to compare as to which is better. I think it's going to depend on the distance. The very shortest flights would certainly be better with Virgin Australia because their chart started lower than Air Canada's does. But you'd have to compare with anything. of any kind of notable distance. But the reason this really stuck out at me is because I see United flights pop up through Virgin Australia Velocity sometimes when I'm using award search tools. And sometimes they're a better price through Virgin Australia Velocity than through other programs, but I've thought I don't have access to Virgin Australia Velocity. However, with Marriott-onvoy, you actually do. So it can be

worth taking a look at this, particularly if you see it come up and an award search tool, result and see if it might make sense. They do maintain different award charts for different partners, and they've got some sort of unique partners. Maybe I'll come back to that in a second, but a couple of sweet spot uses that stood out to me for United are very short United flights between 1 and 600 miles or 8,500 miles each way in economy class. Used to be that Avianca Life Miles had that sort of distance locked up, but not so anymore. So Virgin Australia velocity could be the better deal there. And also particularly short flights to Europe. So 2,400 to 3,600 miles flown, which I think would probably include, I didn't double check this. So you'll have to double check the math.

But I would imagine New York to London and probably some of the other parts of Western Europe would be included under 3,600 miles flown. That's 5,1,500 miles in business class with Virgin Australia velocity. So that's quite a good deal. It's notably good for business class to Europe. And even if you fly a little bit further, up to 4,800 miles flown. That's only 62,000 miles one way in business class, which still puts it among the better options for getting to Europe and business class. So those are not meant to be an exhaustive list of the potential good uses of Virgin Australia Velocity. Those are the ones that stood out to me looking at their award charts. They partner with Atihad and Singapore and A&A and Qatar, so they have a really eclectic mix of

partners where you might find a situation that feds. I wasn't going to calculate the distance between every city pair out there to determine which ones. They might be like. a little bit better on. But my point here is that it might be one worth considering from Marriott. Yeah, yeah. All right. Suppose the situation is not, you know, hey, I need miles in a weird program that I can't get otherwise, but rather, I've got millions of Marriott points.

I know I'm not going to use them. I want to just dump them into an airline program because I fly more than I need points for staying. where would you transfer up to in that kind of situation? Because I know it wouldn't be a GN or a COPA or whatever because you haven't, you don't know enough about those providers, know if they would be generally useful, right,

for lots of things. Right. Or long-term useful, you know, like a GN is, I think that 55K business class pricing has been around forever for the business class flights to Europe. So I have no idea if they might change it at some point. We don't really have a good litmus test for any of that.

And it generally makes sense in the type of situation you just described to transfer to a program where there are so many uses that you're likely to use that you're highly likely to get good value out of it rather than one specific sort of sweet spot. So I think I would first be looking at American Airlines or Alaska Atmos or United because all of those programs offer easy changes in cancellations, very easy to accumulate those miles, whether you're flying those airlines or, with transferable currencies that you probably already have access to, you know, AAA with city, of course, and Alaska with potentially built or Bank of America cards and United with built or chase cards. So you've got lots of good options for transferring to those. So you could easily top off if you need to make an award redemption. So those would probably be my main targets. There are a couple that are kind of otherwise hard to get that maybe you'd consider A&A, Frontier, tap, or Hainan.

None of those stand out to me as being great transfer partners. But, you know, maybe if you were trying to combine your Marriott points with whatever existing AMEX membership rewards points you have, maybe you'd say, okay, well, I want to book this particular award through ANA and this will help me get there. So, you know, maybe in that kind of a case. Yeah. And then there's a few that are like the ones that we use often that aren't in that list. I mean, the obvious programs, Air Canada Aeroplane, Air France, KLM, Flying Blue,

Cathay Pacific, Virgin Atlantic, I think from person to person, it's going to vary as to how useful or which is the best out of those. But those are all good options that we wouldn't hesitate to transfer to. Yeah, yeah. It's interesting when your first answer to this question, though, was like American, Alaska, United, which is not only the three I would pick, but that's the same order I would pick them in. That said, that's in inverse order to how. many miles you would get from the transfer, if I understand this, right? Right? Because American Airlines, you don't get that 5K bump when you're transferring 60K Marriott points. So you just end up with 20K. With Alaska, you do. So if you transfer 60K, Marriott, you get 25K. And then United, you get an extra

5K, right? So you transfer 60K, you actually end up with 30K. So that's the best transfer ratio. So it's a little hard to say of those, which one should you pick? Because, well, I mean, also, and you also pointed out that it's going to depend so much on what your travel plans. Like which ones you're most likely to use? American Airlines has amazing, you know, partner award pricing, especially for international business class. you know Alaska has has this many of the same partners but they also have other partners and eventually are going to allow you to mix partner awards on one ticket maybe United already lets you do mix partners any which way you want but their pricing isn't as good as the other two often

sometimes it is it just depends yeah yeah yeah it depends on the scenario but yes you're That's a really good point because there are situations where that extra, you know, you're looking at 30,000 United Miles versus 20,000 American Airlines miles if you're transferring 60,000 Marriott points. And that 10,000 United Miles is, you know, nothing to sneeze out there. That certainly could make a difference. I would take United. Now, you know, now that you say it that way, like if I to just pick one, I've got to, for some

reason, I've got to get rid of these millions of Marriott points. I think it would, well, I probably actually, in real life, I would, probably. probably sprinkle it around multiple programs. But if I had to pick just one, I think United because of that transfer ratio. And it's a solid program that isn't perfect, but it has good uses and free changes and cancellations and all that stuff that I like. So that's my picture. And I think out of those three, I'd pick Alaska because they, particularly from the East Coast

of Europe, they've got very good award pricing on their partners from the East Coast of Europe. And so while you're right about the fact that you don't get exactly free cancellations, because if you're paying the $20 partner award booking fee, you're not going to get that back, but they do offer free changes. And so, and they offer a stopover on a one-way award. So there are a few things that would, I think, nudge me towards Alaska, but you're totally valid.

Yeah, tough, tough one to call. And then those other programs that we mentioned are all programs that we've talked about before when we talked about, you know, which programs we would consider transferring to speculatively. A lot of those programs came up as potential options anyway. So all of that, I think, is pretty interesting. And I, again, would not call this the most valuable transferable currency out there. But if you've got a ton of Marriott points, any of these could be options worth considering. This episode was produced and edited by Carrie Yoder, music by Annie Yoder. If you've enjoyed what you've heard today and you'd like to get more of this in your email inbox each day or each week,

go to frequentmiler.com slash subscribe to join our email list. Follow us on all the various social media, join our frequent miler insider's Facebook group. And wherever you're watching or listening, don't forget to like this or give it a thumbs up. If you have a question that you'd like to be considered for a future question of the week or a piece of feedback that you'd like to be considered for our giant mailbag, you can send that to? Send it to mailbag at frequentmiler.com. Mike Siegel comedian and since 2011 host of the Travel Tales podcast. When I'm not traveling the world telling jokes for money, I'm traveling for fun out of curiosity and love of new places.

And I love talking about travel with other people who share my passion. Whether they're travel experts, influencers, expats, or I'm just catching up with a fun friend. The subject is always my favorite one, travel. So if you love travel and want to listen to other people who love travel, and maybe even laugh or learn a thing or two, check out the Travel Tales podcast with me, your host, Mike Siegel, anywhere you get your podcasts.

If you love travel, but don't always have time to plan, we've got a podcast for you. It's called Travel In 10, and in every episode, in about 10 minutes, we give you a smart, practical overview of destinations all around the world. We cover what to see, where to stay, where to eat, and what actually matters when you're planning out a truck. It's designed for real life. Listen on the way to the airport, in the car, or while you're thinking about your next getaway. So if you want expert advice, zero fluff, and travel inspiration that you can actually use, search for Travelin 10 wherever you listen to podcasts. or you can also find us at voyescape.com.