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Not wanting to be outdone by American Airlines AAdvantage, United Airlines Mileage Plus is offering a 30% bonus when you convert hotel points into United miles.

This offer will run until 30 November 2019 and, most importantly, you can only receive a maximum of 25,000 bonus miles.

Registration is mandatory! You can register by clicking here.

Does This Offer Make Sense?

Given the generally poor ratio when converting hotel points into airline miles, there are only two scenarios where it makes sense:

• 60,000 Marriott points –> 25,000 airline miles (pre-bonus)
• Small amounts of soon-to-expire hotel points

With Marriott Bonvoy, however, you actually earn a 10% bonus when converting Marriott points to United miles – this is on top of the standard 5,000 mile bonus when converting 60,000 Marriott points.

As a result, if you convert 60,000 Marriott points to United miles during this promotion, you will receive 20,000 + 5,000 (standard bonus) + 2,500 (10% United-specific standard bonus) + 8,250 (30% promotional bonus on the aforementioned amounts) = a total of 35,750 United miles!

What Can I Do With United Miles?

Unfortunately there are no photos of Etihad First Class here… United Airlines Mileage Plus has an award chart that is remarkably lacking in any particular “sweet spot”.

However, United makes up for this with its Excursionist Perk. I highly recommend that you re-read Joe’s series explaining how it works. But if you travel frequently, and like the challenge of putting together a few random flights into a single itinerary, the Excursionist Perk can be incredibly lucrative!

As a really quick example, 33,000 United miles could get you:

• A one-way between the UK and Istanbul in Business Class on Turkish Airlines (25,000 miles)
• A one-way from Miami to Vancouver via Toronto/Montreal in Business Class on Air Canada (free!)
• A tagged on one-way from Brussels or Dublin to the UK in Economy (8,000 miles)

The difficulty is making all of these potential long, single region flights work in chronological order…

Conclusion

Even if you’re not sure whether you will take advantage of this offer, make sure to register anyhow – click here – as it’s never fun to have forgotten all about registration when you decide weeks later to participate…