Get a 30% Bonus When Transferring Marriott Points to United

Update: Some offers mentioned below are no longer available. View the current offers here.

Have a Star Alliance redemption in mind and stash of Marriott points waiting to be used? Here's your opportunity, as United is offering a 30% bonus when converting Marriott — and once SPG points — into United miles.

Before you start transferring, you'll have to register for the promotion here. The promotion ends on Nov. 30, 2018, and you'll have to register and initiate the transfer by then, and the maximum bonus you can earn is 25,000 miles.

Remember that Marriott offers a 25% bonus on its end when converting points to airline miles, and the program already had a increased transfer ratio of 3 Marriott points to 1.1 United miles instead of the standard 3:1 transfer ratio for most other airlines.

When converting 60,000 points (the preferred transfer ratio to earn the standard Marriott transfer bonus), you should end up with 27,500 United miles from the initial transfer and Marriott bonus and an additional 8,250 miles from the promotion United is running — making a grand total of 35,750 miles. You're essentially transforming each Marriott point into 0.6 United miles.

Since you're capped at receiving 25,000 bonus miles, you shouldn't transfer more than 180,000 Marriott points if you're trying to maximize the promotion. United would dole out 24,750 bonus miles on top of the 82,500 from the regular transfer for a total of 107,250 miles.

Be aware that the bonus miles might not immediately appear in your MileagePlus account. The terms of the deal state that "bonus miles will be credited into the member's account on or before January 30, 2019.

You can earn Marriott points with these cards:

• Marriott Rewards Premier Plus Credit Card - 75,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 on purchases within the first 3 months.
• Starwood Preferred Guest® American Express Luxury Card - 75,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months.
• Starwood Preferred Guest® Credit Card from American Express - 75,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months.
• Starwood Preferred Guest® Business Credit Card from American Express - 75,000 bonus points after you spend $3,000 in purchases within the first 3 months.

You can fly in United's new Polaris business class product to Europe for 60,000 miles or China/Korea/Japan for 70,000 miles one-way. Remember you can use United miles to fly on Star Alliance partners like Lufthansa and ANA, but United bumps up award rates when flying on most of its partners.

As always, it's probably only a good idea to make a transfer if you have a specific redemption in mind. The benefit of having a cache of Marriott points is their flexibility with the many transfer partners, and you won't be able to get your points back once the transfer is complete.

H/T: Dan's Deals