That might work. Book the week in the (now) Cat 5 without using any points. When you have the points in April, book the 270K TP. Then call MR (not reservations) to have them attach the Cat 5 certificate to the res.

My observations have been that the bonuses only work when you're doing a transfer that isn't part of the package. AA normally has an exclusion in their statement of conditions that says something along the line of "does not apply when part of a package." This includes the MR travel packages. It's their way of tricking us into going with the lower return option of a straight points to miles transfers. Buyer beware.

While they may do that for some bonus transfer options, I don't know that I'd say that is "normal". I've ordered 5 or 6 different TP awards with AA miles and most every one of them had some bonus points (usually 20% extra points was the bonus if I remember correctly.)

I will admit though that the last TP award I ordered with AA miles was a couple of years ago as I've been ordering the Southwest points option to get the CP award instead.

I recently ordered a TP award with Southwest points but only had around 300K Marriott points. But I wanted to get the Southwest CP before that option closes on us. So I went ahead and ordered the TP award with a Cat. 6 hotel cert. I have a suite room at the Cayman Marriott reserved (Cat. 9 property plus requires a bunch of upgrade certs). I'll get the points before the stay (which isn't until November.) Once I get the required points, I'll call and get them upgrade the hotel cert to cat 9 and attach it to my reservation. I have done that a few times in the past and haven't had any issues.

I have seen some posts here stated that some folks had problems trying to downgrade their certs, but upgrading isn't usually an issue. If you get an agent who doesn't know what their doing, they might say it can't be done. In that case, just hang up and call back to get a different agent.

Also does not apply to UA. On my last transfer, got 132K miles from Travel Package plus 20K bonus for the Nov promo.

Never had this problem with any package transfer (although I've never transferred to American).

My commment was in regard to what I saw with AA. I should have made my comment more specific and not general. Anyway, in reading through the terms of their bonus offer the last time I saw one from them, they had a specific exclusion for the packages.

Think CX have a 30% bonus on transfers running now

BA is offering 35% transfer bonus through 3/8.

In one meaning of the word "record" this is the best I've ever seen and will probably never be surpassed - 150% bonus on Delta transfers.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/marri...ansfers-3.html

Is it the most generous bonus from UA? I am hesitating whether or not to choose the current 35% BA offer. I do have both UA and BA. Not sure how most people value them, 1:1 in value or which is more valuable, BA or UA?

I did two packages on AA during the last 25% bonus promotion period (Q4) and got the bonus as expected, and (AFAIK) so did everyone else who converted during that period.

If the promotion comes from the airline side (i.e. not from the hotel side), the airline wouldn't know for sure whether you bought a package or just transferred straight. Besides, the airline shouldn't care how you did it.

Ok, thanks. I have made the 7 day reservation on non-existing points and they have promised that even after the property has changed to Category 6, I will still be able to apply a Category 5 Travel packages to the reservation.

Let's hope it all works like they promise.

It should. I booked a Cat 6 award (without the required points). A week out from my stay (once the points were removed from my account) I called MR and had them redeposit those points, and book a Cat 6 Travel Package, attaching to the reservation I made about a year out. No issues.