Raffles

Will anyone really care?!

I am sure that Marriott has priced its points at a level which makes them a profit under most (all?) redemption scenarios. I therefore assume that they pay Tesco less than $10 per 1,000 when you transfer. After all, it was Marriott's choice to set the redemptions thresholds (ie 125k for 35k Tesco) where they are. And, lets fact it, you are basically spending £650 for £350 of Tesco clubcard vouchers which hardly seems a bad deal for Marriott or Tesco!

I also assume that Tesco has priced its points at a similar level, meaning that Tesco is not paying more than the face value of the voucher (£2.50 per 600 miles) when you transfer to BA.

And BA, of course, is very careful with its award availability to only release seats for miles that are unlikely to be sold.

In theory, everybody in the pyramid - you, Marriott, Tesco and BA - should be happy with this deal! If not, Marriott and / or Tesco has only itself to blame for setting its transfer values at the wrong level.

The only people who will lose are those at the bottom of the Tesco Deals food chain (Goldsmiths, Virgin Holidays etc) who accept Deals tokens but assume that 99% of customer will only have £50-worth or so. If you use £750 of Tesco vouchers (c£1,400 of Marriott points) to buy a £3,000 Rolex in Goldsmiths, then Goldsmiths will be taking a hit - but I assume they write this off as part of the cost of being part of Clubcard Deals.

I have yet to get to the bottom of whether you can use CC vouchers for Upper Class Virgin Holidays deals. You are not allowed to use CC vouchers for flight upgrades, but some Virgin Holidays are brochure-priced (or at least web-priced) as including UC flights in the basic deal.