Thanks.

You don't even have to make a 7 night reservation. If you know you will only stay 5 nights, then make a 5 night reservation. The cert can be applied to any award reservation for 7 or less nights and the cert meets or exceeds the category level.

I always make the reservation for 7 if there's availability. Sometimes we leave prior to the 7th night, but I like knowing I have a room just in case my flight gets canceled or whatever...

If possible, I do call the hotel to let them know when I'm fully gone...figure they could clean the room and resell if it they like.

Anyone got the Marriott Air Travel page to load correctly?

Yes it was not working yesterday. Today it is.

Thank you!

Having such a hard time deciding where to park time.

United or Delta (ahhhhhhh 1st world problem).

look at where you want to go.. I try to keep no less than 300k in each account..

That way I can almost always do at a minimum 2 RT tickets in economy anywhere.

TOTALLY!

I prefer United but with the upcoming devaluation, its going to hurt a little :( However, with the bonus transfer, that can help offset a little bit.

We tend to travel to Asia with points and United just has more offering.

Can anyone confirm if Delta is offering additional bonus for the transfer?

You may want to take a look on Alaska's program.

There is never any bonus offer to transfer to AS. However, take a look on Alaska partner award chart, CX and JL, and compare the cost AS charges versus the cost UA charges - you will find you pay far less and get the top airlines for Asia travel, because you will NOT get SQ premium cabin using UA miles.

As an example -

50K/70K US to HKG/SE Asia on CX business / first if using AS miles.
90K/140K US to HKG/SE Asia on Partners business / first if using UA miles.

The bonus does not make up the huge difference, not to mention that you dont get any stopover with UA award but you get a stopover even with a one-way redemption on AS award.

Even going to Asia, Aeroplan may still work better as Aeroplan allows 2 stopovers on a R/T booking and is still slightly cheaper than UA's chart. The trick is to only use partners that dont charge YQ. Worth mentioned is, Aeroplan lets you route thru Europe to Asia, so you have more options. UA has stopped allowing this 2 or 3 years ago.

If for travel to Europe, Aeroplan beats all the transfer partners of Marriott as only AA has similar cost but with extremely poor availability and no stopover.

Generally correct except if you’re using UA miles to fly into Australia/New Zealand area you can get a stopover (doing this for the third time in February - flying into Brisbane for 10- nights then to Christchurch for a month then out of Auckland with the Brisbane-Auckland-Christchurch not charged)

I do not know that - is this a special feature for the South Pacific region? Or this is a system glitch?
Or this is the "excursion" allowed on a R/T redemption?

Do you get NZ's premium cabin? If so, that would be a feat.

I am very tempting to make speculative booking on the Asia-South Pacific sweet spot that got killed by Nov 1st. The 30/40K TG J/F SYD-BKK and beyond is very very tempting. Flew this last Spring SYD-BKK-HKG in TG F and J. Had a nice time in SQ's F lounge in SYD (much prefer it over TG F lounge in BKK and never understand the hype the bloggers have, incl the massage.)

Australia and New Zealand are grouped together like a single continent so the stopover is OK.


Got C/J only on the BNE-AKL flight as AKL-CHC only operates in Y.
There was a direct BNE-CHC flight but it doesn't arrive CHC until near midnight and I'm picking up wheels in CHC so must arrive earlier as rental closes at 10.


This is our third trip to NZ for a month like this with Sydney and Melbourne areas used as previous stopovers.

You could do this same routing using AS. I checked this morning and found March availability for 55K miles + $134, including the stopover. Worth consideration. The one AS challenge is they allow just a single partner plus AS flights on any award. So if you don't have access to an AS flight from home to the int'l gateway (i.e., LAX, SFO), it might not be a good choice. In my search I got AS from SEA to LAX, then QF onward.

AS awards on cx are seriously throttled these days - what you see (on ba for example) is not what you get. Pretty sure cx deval is not far away too.. ua is definitely more universal for those without specific near term plans...

I really appreciate the feedback on this. Never thought or looked into AS.

How easy and accessible is AS to redeem 4 tix (econ or business class)? I always travel with the wife and 2 kids (under 7). I find UA has a lot more offering when it comes to making award booking. Again, never booked Business class at all on any level but with the air package and accumulation of points, I am hoping to fly business class in 2018 (one way at the very least).

AS might be a gem for me since we tend to go HKG every time we fly to Asia.