Exactly the same as the point difference of the TP themselves-as the difference is the hotel category. So, if you are going from a cat 1-5 to a cat 7. Look at the point difference between a cat 7 and a cat 1-5 TP.

Just checked out of Frenchmans Reef...was here on a 5 night TP...resort fee of $45/day is not included...tried to negotiate but no dice
..

If you can hold off until an airline offers a bonus for the transfer that is more bang. I got mine when AA offered a 20% bonus on MR transfers .

Speaking of bonus miles, when is the last time United has had one of these bonuses? I've been waiting and hoping to cash in at this time myself. I know we get the 10% bonus with Marriott but I was hoping they'd have a 20% or 50% bonus sometime.

Thank you. last year when I called in they wanted the full 45 K difference but based on the regular booking site for hotel room. I should have known better ! Silly me. :mad:

May be waiting a LONG time for a 50% bonus...

I've just finished a position that required a fair amount of travel, but won't be doing much at all any more for work. We're currently preparing to book a mini-RTW flight with Aeroplan miles. I will need around 150,000 miles extra to book a 3rd business class ticket. As I don't expect a bonus for Aeroplan until November, I'll need to book 2 x 7 day travel packages. We have 600K MR points, and looking at a Cat 5 & 7 hotel.

The question that I'd appreciate some advice on - would you max out the points transfer (120K x 2), putting 90K extra into the aeroplan account, where it's uncertain when we'd use them? Or would you just transfer the 150K in 2 transactions, saving the 90K in MR points, which would be our balance?

At current earnings, it will take a 3+ years to get up to another travel package level, so I wouldn't consider this a head start amount. We would be tempted to use those points on the overnight layovers in Seoul, Beijing and LA - and not at the best value usage!...

Do Vacation Package Seven Days Need to be Consecutive?
 

My plan is to call Marriott later today to ask this, but wanted to see if anyone had any insight...

I cannot find a requirement that the vacation package nights be consecutive. I've pulled the award and made the reservation, and it actually shows as a five night redemption followed by a two night redemption. This got me thinking; the plan is to spend seven nights in Hotel A followed by two nights in Hotel B, located a couple hours away at the beach. It would be much easier to spend five nights at Hotel A, two nights at Hotel B, two nights at Hotel A, as it gets us closer to the airport for departure day and gives us more hours at the beach. This still is a seven night redemption at Hotel A, but with a two night break in between. (Off topic: Gosh aren't the Hopper awards missed!)

Anyone ever done this before?

The way I understand it, the Travel Package needs to be consumed entirely in one stay at the hotel.

You could do, for example, 4 award nights, a paid night, and 3 award nights....a single 8-night stay. (I believe the call center would have to set up the reservation though.)

But I'm reasonably certain you can't consume different parts of a Travel Package on different stays, even at the same hotel. (If you could, that'd make it a much more awesome award, and I'm one who already really likes Travel Packages. :))

You are probably correct, and that's how I have always understood this, but there doesn't appear to be a published rule stating this. I cannot call now - on conference call waiting to speak while they cover something not applicable to me right now - but will call later and report back. If anyone had been successful on this though, I was hoping to have some tips.

This is interesting because theoretically (I would think) you're going to have 3 reservation codes in your above example, so that could mean you could book it all out, and then cancel the paid night (within the window of course). *shrug* But that's just wild conjecture on my part...

Otherwise, I wonder if you could rent a broom closet on the paid nights...?!!!

That thought has crossed my mind as well.

In my experience, this was a bigger issue back in the days of the two-tiered award structure. It was sometimes very hard to find 7 consecutive standard award nights available...I recall cases where there'd be one pesky night in the middle of a stay that was unavailable. I remember a nondescript Residence Inn that showed ZERO award rooms available on any Sunday night - I'm talking about a normal place where Sunday is as low-occupancy as it gets - and there was nothing MR corporate could do about it. Those kinds of situations seem to be less common these days.

In recent years, I can't recall this being an issue for any of my bookings.

Correct on both accounts. I've done this numerous times, and yes to reiterate, you need to call reservations to make this type of reservation. As long a the stay is contiguous, you can use the seven free nights scattered throughout the contiguous stay.

Just called, and was told the nights could not be split, which I'm fine with, but the explanation given was BS.

The agent explained that with the package I was getting a huge break for the points needed for the room. This confused me, so I asked how that could be, given I'm using this on a Cat 4 hotel, which would cost 140k MRPs for the week, and got 70k airline points for a total of 220k MRPs. She explained that since it was 120k MRPs for 50k airline points, if you subtracted that from the 220k MRPs used for the transaction, I was getting seven nights for 100k MRP, or even less, given I took 70k airline points, not 50k.

Had she just told me the rules are the rules, that would have been acceptable. Her answer, which shifted with each question, leaves me still wondering if it can be done. (In my industry, I'm the guy brought in to work with people who think they know a rule, but don't understand the logic behind it and are misinterpreting and misapplying the rule. Once they get it, these people are thrilled to do the right thing going forward. She reminded me of the discussions I have on a daily basis.)

I'm fine not splitting the nights if it isn't allowed. There is no reason, though for the phone agent to make up nonsense. No frequent traveler is going to look at it this way. The discount is on the points conversion from MRPs to airline miles, which is what makes the package a good deal. What she was telling me defied logic.

One of the problems that would occur if you try to split a single award cert across multiple stays is that the cert can only be linked to one reservation and after that "stay" occurs, the cert would be "consumed". Thus it would not be valid or usable for any other stay. My understanding is that there is no "partial" using of a cert. It is either used or not used. So if you used a 7 night cert for a 5 night stay, it would be used and those last 2 nights are just lost.

Note even back when Marriott had their "sampler" awards where you could split up your stay, that award was actually ordering 3 different awards (a 3 night cert plus 2 two night certs.) That was the only way Marriott could get a cert linked to each reservation. So even though the Sampler was a single award, it was really 3 different certs being ordered.

Actually, that is not true.
If you ever do a conversion (going up in hotel category), you see what the value of the Hotel portion is (as you see a credit and then a cost for just the partial travel/Hotel award.)

Since I am MVCI, I only do a 5day package, so the hotel portion is only 10K, which means that the miles are still same cost, hotel is heavily discounted.

Now that is not the reason you can't split, but what she said is true.