[QUOTE=TOMSURFER;17887748]There are only 7 night travel packages.

There are also 5 night travel packages as well. I am not sure but I believe you have to be a Marriott timeshare owner to reserve this package and it must be done on the phone. Also, I was not aware you could split up the 7 night hotel portion into 3/4 night stays. Good news indeed.

Hello all,

It sounds like you received wrong information on how this will work. The Travel package comes with a 7 night certificate that can only be use for a stay at one property. It cannot be split between multiple stays or multiple properties.

In previous posts on this thread, others mentioned that they redeemed their 7night portion and then only stayed three nights, which is fine, but then you are forfeiting those remaining nights.

I hope this clarifies how the 7 night redemption portion the travel package works.

Kind regards,

Marie

+1... It's that 1:1 conversion that is the real kicker considering how you can be earning up to 20 points per dollar on hotel stays. I always hold until I'm at either a Cat 5 or 6 120k TP.

I used to push all Marriott TP's to AA regardless of whether I had a trip planned or not. The TP's are the main reason I qualified for Lifetime Gold on AA a few years ago. (I wish MR and AA would make peace already! :mad: ) Then I did a TP to Southwest because we had a year with a bunch of domestic U.S. travel: the TP triggered a Companion Pass which doubled the effective award value to 10 free trips. ^

My next one will probably go to BA since Avios have become quite a bit more valuable when used on short segments.

[QUOTE=jtp1947;17890735]Correct: To get the (5) night travel packages, you have to own a timeshare.

When you order a travel package award, at what point do you reserve your air travel? How long does it take to get the miles into your account - can I reserve my flights if I don't have enough miles in my FF account until after Marriott transfers the miles?

The miles have showed up within a week for me. You can request to have them expedited if needed. You need not actually redeem them nor use them over other miles. Marriott simply deposits the appropriate number of miles in your account and you do as you wish with them, when you want.

Can you split the air miles between 2 MileagePlus accounts (mine and my husbands)? This would be for United?

Thanks,
Maggie

That's a good question. By standard procedure, I don't think so, if for no other reason that I think that the name on the FF account is supposed to match the name on the Marriott account. Asking politely if they'd do it might persuade them to agree. Let us know if you try it, please.

Unfortunately, as you mentioned, the names on both accounts (Marriott's and the airline's) must match. So the answer is no, you won't be able to have miles deposited into more than one account (per award.)

The other piece of this...which I have little personal experience with...is that DL actually opens decent availability for low awards close to the travel date. Is that a fairly reasonable statement?

I know some of the international carriers do this with reasonable-enough predictability that FT'ers know exactly when to look for their desired J/F seats to open up in the days ahead of their desired flight. If there's enough rhyme or reason to it on DL, I'm surprised that more people aren't defending Skymiles more for that reason. That's a very powerful use of miles!

Regarding the OP, isn't there some better premium-cabin itin to South Africa than 260,000 miles per person? Just pulling up the US Airways award chart, it's 110k R/T in J and 150k R/T in F. That'd be on SAA, which I believe you can get either nonstop or with a technical stop(?) out of NYC. Or through Europe on any number of carriers if SAA availability is too brutal...

That's correct. Delta is relatively strong on near-term availability, albeit relatively weak in far-advance availability. As you suggested, the near-term redemptions, especially as they carry no fees, may be changed/cancelled free, and booked into first class confirmed for 25K within upgrade window (the latter two perks for upper elites only), are extremely valuable.

The above applies to domestic award travel. Not so much so to international, where again, they are relatively weak.

For these reasons, I love using the Marriott Travel Package redemptions when Delta is offering a 50%+ conversion bonus. 120K Marriott points changing into 180K+ SkyMiles that I leverage using the aforementioned perks go a long way!

This a a backwards travel package question that I couldn't get answer searching on FF or the MR T&C.

I've run down my supply of points, but have the 150K+ needed to reserve a week's stay 10 months out. If/when I accumulate a windfall of additional points, can I up-grade the stay certificate to a travel package? Any special rules about doing it? Obviously, I could just buy 50,000 MR points now and be done with it, but I'd rather not unless that is the only way to go.

Art

Yes you can. I think the easiest way for you to do this is to make a dummy booking to temporarily lower your point amount needed for just the stay. THEN, reserve the actual week you want. You will get a choice: "Select order certificate after earning enough points" (Paraphrased) Then, cancel dummy booking and your points are back (MAKE SURE DUMMY BOOKING IS WITHIN CANCELLATION POLICY--you dont want to lose those points).

Then as you get close to your stay, you can just call and attach points OR order and attach the Travel Package.

(If the points are already utilized for your reservation, I dont think they can remove them and then order your TP.)

Fascinating. Especially the impact of booking during partner promo periods. To think I used to use my meager points for the occasional weekend by the in-laws and the like. Looks like I need to grow my points up to the ~300K level.

A US Airways promo just finished. 50% bonus for hotel transfers. 1 to 1 MR points to Miles for the Travel Packages plus bonus. Great deal.