Hi, I am looking to cancel my Amex Gold Card. I know you have to transfer all your points or you lose them. I have 90,000 Amex points stacked up and not sure which airline offers the best value in terms of redemption including taxes etc. (BA & Virgin taxes and charges are extortionate!). I know people say you shouldn't spread your points too thin across multiple programmes but I think 90,000 points in another programme would help give more flexibility when redeeming (e.g booking two one-way tickets with different programmes). I already have a lot of Avios points via BA Amex spend etc. and the same with Virgin Club Points. Flying Blue I have read is pretty poor value apart from when they have promotions. Which other Airline programme do other people use and would recommend transferring amex points to? Singapore? Asia Miles? Etihad? etc....?
Not Etihad... Singapore and Cathay have their uses, but it mostly depends on where you think you might like to travel. There's no real substitute for looking at the award charts. Marriott Rewards could also get you some decent hotel stays...
I would say Singapore - great product, reasonable-ish award chart (with some gems, like Istanbul or Cape Town to/from Singapore and surrounding region for 45k miles one way) and no surcharges unless you redeem on partner airlines. The downsides are that the website is horrible to use and that there's a 3 year 'hard' expiry policy. If you want to maintain flexibility, Marriott is a solid option. 90k amex would get you 135k marriott. 120k marriott can then be transferred to 50k of pretty much any airline miles. Yes, you lose some value compared to transferring straight to Singapore or whatever, but you get to keep your options open and can transfer to high value programmes like Alaska and United. United have a 30% bonus on transfer right now (you need to opt in: https://promotions.united.com/offers/p2m) - so you'd end up with 65k United for 120k marriott (80k amex). And you could always use Marriott Points for hotels of course, if you've already got plenty of other miles.
Etihad might not actually be a bad idea if you fancy going to Asia... 52,000 for a round trip Prague to Seoul in business class
Marriott is probably the best option for "I need to convert my Amex points but I don't have anything specific planned or enough for a full reward flight". Marriott points have the flexibility of being useful for hotel stays. Or, if you have at least 60k Marriott points, you can convert them to 25k miles. I can think of all kinds of fun things to do with Alaska or United miles...
Have currently roughly 50000 amex points and quite a few avios coming in the following months. For hotel stays would it always be better off converting to marriot points or worth having a look at avios ?
You should always try to book hotel stays with hotel points. You'll get more value than spending airline miles on hotel stays.
[ If you want hotel stays from your amex points, definitely transfer to one of the hotel partners rather than Avios. Whether Hilton, Marriott or Radisson is the best transfer option for you really depends on the sort of the hotels you like, which regions of the world you might want to use them in, etc.
Haha! I actually have a confession: I transferred some Amex Points to Radisson myself just this week...
I have had great experience booking with Singapore airlines. Their reward availability is pretty decent compare to lots of other rewards programmes. They also have quite a bit of availability with other airlines
