I have over 425,000 Marriott points, which allows be a 20 nights, 4 airline ticket award.

My questions:

Do the airline and hotel have to be used together? A previous thread discussed some of this--has anyone figured the way to maximize the redemption? It appears American Airlines just converts your airline award into Advantage miles, giving me felxibility as to how I want to use the award. It appears the maximum AA award is 60,000 to where Marriott has hotels and AA flies, so could I have 240,000 (4 tickets) deposited into my AA account and use them however and whenever I want?

If so, how does the hotel certificates (2-10 night certificates) work--do you have to use ten nights at one time, or can they be split from various hotels and different times (ie. 2 nights in April, 3 nights in May, etc.)?

Any input is appreciated.