rob_flies_ua

And now for a quick warning:
Per the FAQ, one can earn a hit for transferring hotel points that result in a minimum of 850 dividend miles being deposited. There apparently was an error in the first tier sweep on 9/29 that resulted in transfers of exactly 850 deposited dividend miles *not* counting as a hit. This has since been fixed.

• Best Western: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 5,000 points to 1,000 miles. Elites can apparently buy points, $10 for 1,000 points and they will generally status match most other hotel programs. It should be free and fairly straightforward to transfer points to another Best Western Rewards member for them to do a transfer to their own DM account (see posts #314 to 318). The activity date for the transfer is the date the transfer was initiated. Best Western forum
  
• Choice: Minimum transfer size for anyone (non-elite or elite) is 5,000 Choice points to 1,000 dividend miles. Normal cost to buy points is $11 for 1,000 points. Through December, $11 will get you 1,100 points. It's possible for some to transfer e-rewards to Choice once per quarter for $100=>4,000 points, $60=>2,200 points, or $30=>1,000 points. E-rewards transfer happened instantly for me. Purchasing points might take 24 hours. At least one transfer to a different person's DM account was taken back last year. Transfers to DM take about a week. Choice forum
  
• Club Carlson: Other posts on FT look like minimum transfer size for anyone is 2,000 points to 250 miles, which would mean 8,000 points to 1,000 miles to meet the minimum requirement for a hit. Make sure to do the transfer as one transaction with a quantity of 4 to get the hit. Transfers to a different person's DM account work, or you can just freely transfer to someone else's Club Carlson account. It looks like Club Carlson backdates transfers by one day (which might be good at the end of the promotion if you need one last hit). Club Carlson forum
  
• Hilton: Minimum transfer size for anyone (non-elite or elite) is 10,000 points to 850 miles. Normal cost to buy points is $0.0125 per point for under 10,000 points or $0.01 per point for 10,000 or more points. Note that this means you should never, ever buy 8 or 9 thousand points as it'll be cheaper or the same price to buy 10 thousand points. If you have no stays or partner activity, your account must be open for 90 days before you can purchase points. Purchased points should post within 30 minutes. Also, the ability to transfer AA miles to Hilton points will be going away sometime in the near future. Transfers to DM take about a week. Transfers to another person's DM account should work. Hilton forum
  
• Hyatt: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 5,000 points to 2,000 miles. Normal cost to buy points is $24 per 1,000 points. Through September 30, $24 will get you 1,200 points. Looks like Hyatt transfers post once a month, with the correct activity date. Hyatt forum
  
• La Quinta: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 6,000 points to 1,000 miles. Normal cost to buy points is $11 per 1,000 points. There's a 25% bonus promotion running at the moment (expires Nov 30), which should lower the cost for a hit to $55 if you start with zero LQ points. It's possible to transfer e-rewards once per quarter for $100=>4,000 points, $60=>2,200 points, or $30=>1,000 points. Please note that La Quinta is listed in the Terms and Conditions, but not the Rules, and that US Airways has confirmed via e-mail that LQ counts as a transfer hit. Watch out for activity dates, post 330 says that a transfer initiated 9/24 posted with an activity date of 9/29 so probably not a good end-game hit. Transfers should post on Thursdays.
  
• Marriott: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 10,000 points to 2,000 miles. Normal cost to buy points is $12.50 per 1,000 points. Transfers to another person's DM account should work. Looks like Marriott posts pretty quick. Marriott forum
  
• Priority Club: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 10,000 points to 2,000 miles and must be done by calling in. It's possible to buy 10,000 points for $60 or 5,000 points for $40 and they post pretty much immediately (see post 222). There has been one report of a transfer to a different person's working, even though the previously generally accepted wisdom was that transfers to another DM account won't work, and more recently that the loophole has been closed. Transfers to DM take about a week. Priority Club forum
  
• SPG: Minimum transfer size for anyone (general or preferred members) is 2,500 starpoints, for golds 1,500 starpoints, and for platinums 1 starpoint (although the Grand Slam minimum is 850 starpoints) and you'll receive 1 mile per starpoint. There's a 5,000 point bonus per 20,000 starpoints in a transfer. You can normally buy starpoints for $.035 per point with a 500 point minimum ($17.50/500), but there's a 20% discount through the end of the year which means the cost is $14/500. Transfers to DM take about a week and transfers to a different person's DM account should work. SPG forum
  
• Wyndham: Minimum transfer size for anyone is 8,000 points to 3,200 miles. No way to buy points directly that I can see. Transfers to a different person's DM account should work. Wyndham forum

Accor does not count as a transfer hit.

If you don't want to buy points, it looks like for a lot of programs it's quite easy to earn points with cheap rental cars, see lowfareair's post for more info.

BryanIAH

What is the minimum number of points per transfer for non-elites?

rob_flies_ua

5,000 points for 1,000 US miles.

cmckee1961

I think it's great that you are jumping in and offering tips already even though the promo isn't out yet. A lot of us have been planning for a couple of months now. Go team!

I do however agree with the suggestions of other members that rather than create a separate thread for every question or idea that we should have some threads that go by category. So perhaps we could start one called "Hotels" and merge this post in to that.

cmckee1961

Not sure how we do that though.

Zurich Flyer

only us customers are able to purchase choice points. i simply signed up a new choice account with a us fake address, purchased the points and will transfer them in the beginning of september. did the same last year.

rob_flies_ua

I've asked the mods to change the title to "Hotel Transfer Points" or something similar, and I'll try to keep it updated for all transfer options.

The FAQ also states that a minimum of 850 miles must be transferred in, so no more SPG Plat 1 starpoint => 1 mile transfers, which means that as an SPG Gold with a 1,500 starpoint minimum transfer, I might as well "waste" the extra 650 starpoints and just do the transfer myself, as the incremental cost over transferring just 850 starpoints from some other SPG plat member is minimal.

Exiled in Express

^

With US Airways®, you can transfer up to 79,999 of your Starpoints® into Dividend Miles® at a 1-to-1 ratio. And for every 20,000 Starpoints transferred within the same transaction, you will earn 5,000 bonus Starpoints which will be automatically added to your transfer up to a maximum of 94,999 miles per eligible transfer.

There is no minimum point transfer requirement for Platinum members.
Gold members have a minimum point transfer of 1,500 Starpoints and Preferred members have a minimum point transfer of 2,500.

SOURCE

Starwood points can be purchased for $17.50 per 500.
BUY HERE

NewArrival

Assuming La Quinta qualifies as a transfer hit -- we'll know soon enough -- the transfer is probably 6000 points -> 1000 miles. I'm considering an eRewards $100 deposit for 4000 LQ, then buying the remaining 2000 from the LQ website ($22), giving me enough for the DM transfer. That's $22 out of pocket just for a hit. Sound all right? Guess we should wait for GS terms before assigning values, and values depend on tier levels, but what do you think at this point about this plan? Too soon to say? (I'd still have enough eRewards for DM deposit hit.)

UPDATE: Confirmed, La Quinta IS part of Grand Slam.

Zurich Flyer

Sounds all right, BUT it's not only 22 $, it's also the (opportunity) costs for the 100 $ e Rewards credits @:-)

needtoescape

A couple of other options to consider depending on how many e-rewards points you want to use and what transfer partners are available to you:

1) Choice Privileges: Do two e-rewards redemptions, one in Sep and one in Oct (4K points for $100, 1K points for $30) since the redemption limitation is based on calendar quarters to get the 5K that was last year's transfer minimum).

2) La Quinta: Again, it appears you could do two e-rewards redemptions ($100 and $60 in Sep and Oct respectively) to get 6200 LaQuinta points.

Assuming you have the e-rewards currency to spend more than $100, the trade-off with both these options is whether $30 in e-rewards currency is worth more to you than $11 out-of-pocket. If the e-rewards are worth more to you, just buy the last 1000 (CP) or 2000 (LQ) points as discussed above and in the original post.

Priority Club and Hilton also are options, and assuming no current points in either program, the total e-rewards cost of getting to last year's transfer amount of 10K points would be:

Hilton HHonors: $175 e-rewards total, but it seems like it is already too late to make two e-rewards transfers before the end of Grand Slam since the redemption limitation is once per 90 days, and Aug 21 to Nov 14 is less than 90 days. But, for people with some HH points now or an alternate source of getting points (e.g., dining program, shopping, stays) the $100 e-rewards redemption provides 7000 HH points)

Priority Club: $260 e-rewards total, with no redemption limitations

I agree with your prioritization of getting the USAirways e-rewards transfer hit first.

I also agree with the other respondent about considering the opportunity costs of using your e-rewards on hotel transfers for GS versus other uses.

lowfareair

rob_flies_ua, here's what I posted in the advance planning thread, updated with current info:

One thing I noticed that's missing is how easy it is to earn some/all of the hotel points needed with Avis/Budget to transfer to US for hits. Here are their good REGULAR hotel rewards (no coupon code required, free except noted):

Best Western(Avis only): 1000 per rental (5 rentals for a transfer)
Choice(both offer it, Avis charges $.75/day surcharge: 1000 per rental (5 rentals)
La Quinta: 1000 per rental (6 rentals)
Programs with a much more meager amount of points, but good for a small top-up:
Hilton: 250 per rental (40 rentals for a transfer)
Hyatt (Avis only): 300 per rental (17 rentals)
IHG: 125 per day (80 days)
SPG (Avis only): 50 per day (50 days)
Wyndham: 50 per day (160 days)

Other rental agencies don't offer as much as Avis/Budget does, although Hertz has 500 Marriott points per rental. Weekend rates can be cheap as well if you use a good corporate code.

Current promos that help (via Evan!'s thread in Milesbuzz), details there:

5000 bonus HHonors points on 2+ day rentals with Budget (2 rentals = hit)
3x IHG points at Avis (375/day) with 2+ day rental
1,750 Best Western points at Avis with 2+ day rental (3 rentals = hit)
1,150 Wyndham points at Alamo on 3+ day rentals
1,000 Hyatt points at Avis on 2+ day rentals

Not everything here is lucrative, but it can help if you need to 'top off' an account to make a transfer. Plus, it's a way for car rentals prior to the start date of GS to count towards a hit, or if you'll have more than 6 car rentals during GS.

kochleffel

In the hope that this thread will be renamed to encompass everything related to hotel transfers for the GS:

I was looking for a way to top up my Priority Club account so that there would be enough points to transfer, and I noticed that in their shopping mall there is a section specifically for gift cards. I don't know whether purchasing gift cards from their other merchants earns PC points*, but at least those listed in the gift-card section are supposed to.

And I was a bit surprised to find beauty.com listed and drugstore.com not, considering that they have a combined check-out and their gift cards are interchangeable. My purchase of a beauty.com gift card was acknowledged by drugstore.com.


--------------

*Last year there was a lot of discussion about whether purchasing gift cards through the US shopping mall earned DM or not.

tripice351

One missing partner on your list: Club Carlson, which offers 750 points per rental from Avis, Budget or Sixt. They also have what looks like pretty good discount w/ bonus coupon codes right now, 5000 total points for 2+ day rentals from Avis (25% discount) and Budget (20% discount).

link: http://www.clubcarlson.com/fgp/earn/home.do

lowfareair

Thank you, knew I forgot a program!

Noticed the hotel stay and hotel transfer threads were merged, does this make the most sense?