It’s an annual tradition for American to offer a conversion bonus for moving points from a hotel program into AAdvantage miles. Historically this was a summer offer, and focused on Starwood like in 2014, in 2015 and 2016.
Revenue growth at AAdvantage is materially below expectation and they would love hotel chains to buy more of their miles, so they’ll give you a 25% bonus through June 15 for doing it.
Earn 25% bonus miles when you convert hotel points
From now through June 15, 2017, convert your hotel points to American Airlines AAdvantage® miles, and you’ll earn a 25% bonus on the amount of miles you receive from the conversion.
The bonus offer page then lists “participating hotel partners” but this is somewhat misleading because they aren’t all eligible for this bonus offer, Wyndham Rewards is included in the list but specifically called out as ineligible (“Point conversions from Wyndham Hotel Group are not eligible for the 25% bonus offer.”)
The programs that you can transfer from to earn the bonus are Club Carlson, Best Western Rewards, Choice Privileges, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, IHG Rewards Club, Marriott Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest. Starwood transfers and Marriott travel package redemptions offer enough base value without the bonus that 25% more miles is worth considering.
However as a general rule I do not recommend transferring points to AAdvantage speculatively. I don’t expect to be able to use American AAdvantage miles for travel on American Airlines.
American Boeing 787-8 Business Class
However I find them very valuable for certain partner redemptions especially travel on Etihad and Qatar.
American AAdvantage allows you to place an award on hold for 5 days even without points in your account. That’s often useful, since you can lock in an award and then purchase miles or even move them from Starwood (which while not instantaneous does tend to complete within 48 hours). However this bonus may not be played that way — the bonus will not appear with the transfer instead:
Bonus miles will be posted by American Airlines to the qualifying AAdvantage member’s account within 7 business days after the initial conversion activity has been posted by the participating Hotel Partner.
That’s important, and significantly undermines the usefulness of this promotion for actually using the miles you transfer to AAdvantage (which from their perspective may be a feature rather than a bug).
AA may have a revenue problem but it will not go away unless and until they open up Saver award seats. The inventory is so very low that the program has become an embarrassment. Sure you can use them on BA but why not just buy a ticket after they load their fees.
I would advise hotels to do business with Mileage Plus as Delta and AA are not very good options.
I moved on. Focusing on Alaska now, the one program whose value is actually increasing for me, now that they started serving my home airport. I still have AAdvantage miles to burn, but very limited interest in accumulating more unless they start opening up Saver award seats. Too many long drives or paid positioning flights to use partners.
Excellent! Now I can get the 75,000 miles I need for standard availability in F from DCA to ORD!
Just what we need..more worthless American miles. I keep mine with my collection of East German marks
Why even cover the AA new miles gimmick of the week when the miles are about useless to use or save?