Marriott Points to AA Miles
 

What is the best way to get Points to Miles? I currently have about 250,000 Marriott Reward Points.

The best way to get points to miles, IMHO is to use the combination hotel/air miles awards.

For 235K points, you get 120K miles on AA (or any other domestic airline) and a 7 night stay at a cat. 5 or lower Marriott.

Now you don't have to use the hotel stay if you don't want to - you can redeposit it and get a measly 45K points back for a nominal fee. Effective cost is then 190K miles.

A much better use of the points is to use the stay for an expensive hotel stay - like Hawaii or use a cat 6/7 award for use in say the Paris Marriott, which I have done several times.

Also, consider requesting an awards BEFORE you have 235K miles. Marriott will officially allow you to purchase up to 10% of your needed miles (23K) at $10 per K. Since I value the points at more than $10/K I would like to buy miles when I can. Now unofficially, Marriott will sometimes let you buy up to 20% of the miles needed (that's 47K miles). That means you only need 188K points, plus $470 to buy 120K airline miles and a week's stay in a Marriott (or get 45K points back for a nominal fee). Effective cost is then 143K points plus $470 for 120K miles.

Of course, if you earn miles like I do, it's hard to stop at exactly 188K points nor do I necessarily need miles when I reach such a point. So, I just continue to accrue them and value the options that I have being able to turn the Marriott rewards points into miles on just about any airline.

Hope this helps.

Billy

(Edited for spelling errors.)

Perhaps the best way, as mentioned in this thread, is to use the Travel Package Award. For example, you could claim the 083 award (235K pts) which nets 120K FF miles. Best part is that these miles count toward MM status. The thread even discusses returning the hotel portion of the award for a refund of MR points.