Anna,

What Damian and others are trying to do is point you towards the best deal for your circumstance.

Travel Package 082 gives you 7 free nights at a class 1-5 Marriott plus 100K miles on your choice of airline for 215K MR points. You say that you currently have 210K which means it would cost you $50 to buy 5K needed to reach 215K for the award.

Quickly checking the Marriott Rewards site reveals their Air Rewards which provide a direct transfer of MR points to airline miles. The best transfer for you uses a combination of 3 different awards (789+790+566) for the same 215K MR points. Using this method, you end up with 75K miles on the airline of your choice.

Obviously, the first suggestion is the better one. You get more miles and a free week's stay.

Once you have the miles in your preferred airline account, you can transfer them as you wish. If you are insistent on transferring to another hotel plan, I suggest depositing the miles with Delta. You can then transfer DL miles to Hilton Honors points on a 1:2 basis. Thus you can turn 215K MR points into a free week's stay and 200K HHonors points. (Note you can also do this through CO, but DL is quicker and more dependable)

You can not transfer airline miles directly into Starwood points. However there is a work around if you have a Diners Club card. Send the 100K miles to U or AA (I'd suggest AA as the miles count toward lifetime elite status) and then transfer the miles to your Diners Club Rewards account. From there, you transfer your DC points to Starwood on a 3:1 basis. Thus the 100K airline miles earned through Marriott now become 33,333 Starwood Points. Note that DC does charge some nominal fees in association with their transfers.

As Damian has noted, all you have to do to start the ball rolling is to call MR customer service and request an award. You just need to give them the airline and your FF# to have the miles deposited in your airline of choice.. The other parts of the award (hotel certificate, Hertz discount certificate and the much vaunted calling card) will be mailed to you.

[This message has been edited by BillMorrow (edited 07-22-2002).]