Best use of points for China trip?

Old Aug 22, 2012, 10:50 pm
  #1  
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Join Date: Aug 2012
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Best use of points for China trip?

My husband, daughter and I are going to China at the end of the year for a two-week trip. I've recently accumulated about 85,000 MR points and am trying to figure out the best way to use them. We live in Atlanta so we'll be flying from Atlanta into Beijing. We aren't sure yet which airline we will use, probably either Korean Air or Delta. I really doubt we have enough miles for a free ticket so I wonder if we might have enough for upgraded seats? We really don't fly that much so I'm not sure what sort of points that would require. I'm also wondering if a better use of our points may be for hotels in China? We'll probably be staying at a Crowne Plaze in one city and a Marriott in the other.

We're not sure yet of the specifics because this is an adoption trip so they don't finalize flight/hotel details until the trip gets much closer. I'm just trying to figure out what will be the most bang for the buck, points wise.

Any advice would be appreciated.
GLewis is offline  
Old Aug 23, 2012, 7:36 am
  #2  
mia
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Welcome to Flyertalk. Membership Rewards points can be transferred to Delta Airlines. Here is Delta's award chart for upgrades:

http://www.delta.com/skymiles/use_mi...ards/index.jsp

Look at the section headed: Between the 50 U.S., Bermuda, Canada, the Caribbean, or Mexico AND Japan, China, or Korea via the Pacific The catch is in the fine print, upgrades only apply to "select fares". I suggest you speak with Delta to compare their lowest available fare to the lowest fare which is upgrade eligible to understand the real cost of the upgrade.

Membership Rewards points cannot be transferred to Korean Air.

Intercontinental Hotel Group (Crowne Plaza) and Marriott no longer participate in Membership Rewards. See this link for a full list of transfer partners:

http://www.membershiprewards.com/cat...readcrumb=true
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Old Aug 23, 2012, 10:49 am
  #3  
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Location: Shanghai
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Your upgrade idea is pretty much a non starter, but you almost have enough miles for ONE business class ticket using ANA or AC miles (you, hubby, and daughter can duke it out for that seat).

http://www.membershiprewards.com/cat...readcrumb=true

I'm not sure which is the better of the two programs at present, but they will both put you on the same (Star Alliance) flights. I book a lot of *A wards for friends, and there's also something on offer. The thing about this is that the routings can be somewhat crazy (e.g. ATL-JFK-ICN-PEK). Since revenue flights on crazy routings are often very expensive, you might have to split up your party, and book the rest on revenue tickets.
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