WOW! However, is that MR points or FF miles -- still quite impressive!

But I hear you. Am doing a re-think on the travel pkgs -- at least my spouse's. Since I can put FF miles into my AA account only from my MR account -- I think we will pass on the travel pakg option with hers.

More views on this issue, requested!

Excellent question Njupin... I too grappled with the pending issue over the past month, while in the process of booking a travel package to Rome next summer. I was at almost 600k of Marriott points. I always book my trips well in advance to take advantage of availability. I did book the 0910 pack (7 night cat 7 and 120k AA miles) at the end of the day. I plan to use the AA miles on long haul international as stated by Bpauker, to get the most value.
Even with award tix fees, taxes and fuel charges....getting international award tix is still a good value.

In my current situation...my Marriott earn rate is much faster...and will continue to be much faster than any of my preferred airline earn rates (AA, DL, UA). This past spring I used 240k of "airline" AA miles to go to Cancun, depleting my AA account down to a "measly" 250k. If my earn rate improves on the Airlines then I will tend NOT to book a travel package and use the Marriott points for hotels only.

I am elite in AA (LT gold....also going for LT Plat) and UA so that helps. Transferring miles from Marriott to AA helps in the quest for LT PLAT.

But you can put AA (or any other airline Marriott deals with) miles in either of your accounts.

Example: to put miles in your wife's AA account with a travel package where she has only 100K Marriott points but you have a million. Order the reward (by phone, I imagine) and tell them you'll be making up the difference from your account. They will take 170K from your account (100K + 170K = 270k) and dump it in her account, issue the cert in her name (or yours, I think) and put the 120K miles in her AA account.

Problem is that I have over 300,000 in my account and she has over 500,000, so neither could do this maneuver -- at least not right now.

Will consider it when mine drops below the amount required for the award, but I think that for the present, I will just redeem a hotel only award from her account -- but could be persuaded by contrary posts on this issue! :)

By the way, in doing research for this post, I came across HHoppe1 post about now being able to upgrade/downgrade hotel portions of a travel package -- could not do this before and did not know of this change.

This was important to me as I am sitting on a 7 night Category 6 reward and would have loved to downgrade it and get the 15,000 points refunded to my account -- Guest Rewards confirmed that this can be done.

However, Berlin is such a hot destination right now, that whereas a couple of years ago award availability was wide open for the Marriot and the CY City Center -- that is not the case now.

Problem is the 7 night award is booked under the wife's reward number and they will not substitute my name and awards number for hers.

Was told that SOP was to cancel the reward reservation and then re-book under me. Problem is, space is so tight, unlikely would get the dates wanted -- Calendar shows many dates already sold out for Standard Rewards.

So unless one of you know a special phone number to make the switch, will have to content myselfy with the 7 night awards stay taken from her account, and upgrade/downgrade my Cat 6 for some other stay -- no biggie, but would have preferred to clear the books before using another reward.

I believe that travel packages are better now than ever. International flights to/from my country have gone up 50-80% this year so converting MR points to AA miles is a great deal for me. If you are pursuing your 1MM threshold for lifetime gold, that's a major reason to keep on using them. Gold makes a lot of difference with AA.

The travel packages are the only awards I redeem with MR. For me they provide the best value.

I booked an Executive First ticket to Brazil on Air Canada (75K miles) over New Years plus 7 nights at The JW in Rio ^ and I still have 35K miles which can fly me anywhere in North America in Y.

Another factor to consider is how quickly you'll use the airline miles. For the last several years, as my MR balance increased, I'd always assumed that whenever I was ready to book a weeklong Marriott reward stay, I'd redeem the package and stash the miles into my AA account.

But I'm up over AA 400K miles now, and don't have any immediate plans for any overseas vacations. So it'll take me a while to burn thru what I already have, and given how qucikly the airlines are changing their programs, I would be hesitant to drop another 120K miles to AA. Who knows how much airline devaluation may occur over the next 3-5 years before I'd be ready to use them?

On the other hand, if my airline balance were minimal and I had short-term flight plans, I wouldn't hesitate to redeem a MR package and use the miles for the trip, even if I had to pay whatever ~$50-100 redemption fee the airline might currently be imposing.

The best value is clearly to continue using the travel packages. It allows you to get the hotel reward at the same points as if you did it separately as well as the airline miles at 1:1 which is phenomenal. If you did the hotel & mileage redemptions separately, the mileage redemption is over 2 points per 1 mile.

YMMV, but I always prefer to get the most value out of a reward.

I agree completely, travel packages are a great deal.

The only advantage of separate redemptions is that it now appears that the hotel samplers allow you to use the free stays on different dates, rather than as a single 1-week block. Depending on your schedule it can be a bit tricky to find a solid week to stay at a particular hotel.

700K-900K MR points alone. NOT including 350K+ airline miles a year.

Let me clarify.....

The TP's are a GREAT VALUE, IF you dont have enough FF miles. The problem I have is that FF flights are becoming so difficult to use, I am planning on using my MR points for hotel stays, and NOT flights. I buy my flights, u/g using miles or buy F/J, and use MR points for STAYS only!

YMMV, but this works for me!

Actually I have a "modified" strategy. Redeem travel packages and get AA miles to get lifetime PLT/Gold. Then transfer from AA to Hilton where I can redeem "free" nights even when a hotel is sold out. Beats Marriott's availability.

That should improve since it appears you are moving from Nonepass to UA MP. MP is much easier to redeem than Nonepass IMO. There is a reason it is referred to as Nonepass. For mileage redmeption, I find AA to be the best with UA in second. Now from what I understand NW has good redemption, but I really don't like their premium product so what's the point. There is plenty of availability using your Nonepass miles for redemption on NW (I wonder why?). Now getting premium international awards (including confirmed upgrades) to certain high demand destinations like SYD, PEK, and PVG can be tough on any airline.

By my point / mileage valuations and calculations, it appears the cat 7 - 120K miles package effectively increases the value of Marriott points by 35-40%. (I value Marriott points at .70-.75 cents each and AA miles at about 1.35 cents each.) That's a huge increase.

On the other hand, as some have noted, if you don't need the miles for award travel in the immediate future, it may be better keeping the points with Marriott. The potential for airline devaluation is great, much greater in my view than the potential for hotel point devaluation. Also, to maximize the benefit of the travel package, you need to do a 7 night award stay. Many people, myself included, don't stay in one place for that long.

I am toying with the idea of redeeming for a travel package for a trip to London next summer. Air award is already booked so it is a choice of booking 7 hotel nights using my HHonors points or going with Marriott and racking up an additional 120K miles toward AA Lifetime Platinum status. I'm 450K miles away and getting 120K miles closer is very appealing, but I don't need the additional AA miles to sit in my account. The HHonors redemption is actually a better deal if I only look at the hotel stay, but the AA miles give a solid edge to the Marriott award. On the other hand, I'm Diamond with HHonors and will only be Silver with Marriott so upgrade chances much higher with HHonors. Decisions, decisions.....

IMHO, There's not really a decent Hilton property in London to compare with what Marriott offers there. I've had great stays with Hilton in Paris, Budapest, and Rome, but the UK seems like a pimple of the butt of Hilton and they can't seem to get it right.
Hotels will devalue the points to some extent by category creep, but overall they appear to be a much more stable quantity compared with airlines.

I came to the conclusion a couple of years ago that the bang-for-the-buck ratio was much better with hotels than with airlines. Now, with them charging for baggage, and even getting an award ticket, it's hard to economically justify scrambling for miles.

I've burned most of mine, and my future plans are along the lines of doing what it takes (promos, cc's, etc.) to get the miles for a particular trip, and then use them up.

Meanwhile, I'm getting Marriott and Choice points faster than I can use them, and Hilton (with their AMEX) keeps building up in the background.

Works for me.