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By stacking a few promotions, you can currently snag yourself a very nice little haul of free Etihad Guest Miles!

Step 1) When you join Etihad Guest you are gifted 500 free Miles. That doesn’t sound much in itself, but it’s actually a great start because of my next point…

Step 2) Etihad Guest allows you to pool Miles in a family household account. This is pretty generous, as it allows up to 9 members (including yourself) and you can add “household help” as well as extended family members. Etihad Guest does reserve the right to “audit the relationships”, so I wouldn’t go mad and start adding your dog etc, but actual family members will be fine.

Step 3) As I wrote about last week, Marriott Rewards is currently running an extremely lucrative offer for new members – 1,000 airline miles just for signing up. I focused on Avios in that article, but you can also also choose Etihad Guest Miles instead.

Now, not everyone is necessarily going to be able to benefit from the full 13,500 Miles (at least, not legitimately…), but most readers should be able to take advantage to some extent.

Are Etihad Guest Miles any good?

Yes – it’s not one of the programmes I focus my collecting on the most, but I definitely look out for ways to add to my balance.

Etihad Miles are particularly useful for redemptions on American Airlines, because the Etihad Guest AA award chart is essentially the same as what American used to offer before a significant devaluation. 20,000 Miles can get you an Economy ticket between Europe and North America and Business Class is 50,000. 12,500 Miles (which you could potentially get for free via the above) is enough for any Economy flight within USA/Canada, including transcontinentals.

Redemptions on Etihad itself are ‘ok’ value. The product is great, and you get chauffeur transfers etc, but the rates are a bit steep these days. A one-way Business Class redemption between London and Abu Dhabi will set you back just over 62,000 Miles (+$100 surcharge), for example.

It’s worth remembering that you can top up Etihad accounts by transferring American Express Membership Rewards Points at a 1:1 rate, and there is also a free UK credit card that, until recently, was offering 15,000 Miles as a signup bonus. Transfers from Heathrow Rewards are possible too.

If you collect as a family, it isn’t difficult to build a decent balance quite quickly.

Etihad offers ‘Pointspay’ as an option too. which allows you to exchange your Miles for cash. The rate is surprisingly decent at ~0.5p, so 13,500 Miles could get you about £67.00 in hard cash!

Free Etihad Guest Miles Bottom line

One of the great things about family / household accounts is that they allow you to scale up small offers into something more meaningful. 13,500 free Etihad Guest Miles for (maybe) 30 minutes of work really isn’t bad at all!