One Week Only: 35% Bonus When You Convert Marriott Bonvoy to Aeroplan
Until June 26th, you can convert your Marriott Bonvoy points into Aeroplan Miles and receive 35% more miles. Like most Bonvoy transfers to airlines partners, for every 60,000 Bonvoy points you convert, Marriott will kick in an extra 5,000 miles. In this case, an extra 5,000 Aeroplan miles.
This could be an excellent opportunity to get the Aeroplan miles you need for that sweet business class redemption you’ve been planning. With a referral, the personal AMEX Bonvoy card is currently offering a welcome bonus of 51,000 Bonvoy points after you spend $3,000.00 in your first three months of card membership.
Typical conversions
Marriott Bonvoy points typically convert to Aeroplan at a rate of 3:1. Here’s what a conversion using this promotion would look like:
| Convert Bonvoy Points | Get Aeroplan Miles |
| 30,000 | 10,000 |
| + 3,500 bonus | |
| = 13,500 total |
But also remember that Marriott will kick in an extra 5,000 Aeroplan miles when you convert 60,000 Bonvoy points, which would look like this:
| Convert Bonvoy Points | Get Aeroplan Miles |
| 60,000 | 20,000 |
| + 5,000 bonus (from Marriott) | |
| + 8,750 bonus | |
| = 33,750 total miles |
Notice that the bonus is paid on top of the total miles from Marriott, including the extra 5,000.
This promotion has a very appealing angle when you consider the conversion opportunity available from AMEX MR-S (aka Membership Rewards – Select from the AMEX Cobalt Card). AMEX MR-S points can be converted at a rate of 5:6 to Bonvoy points. And since the AMEX Cobalt collects 5 MR-S points per dollar spent at restaurants and grocery stores you could really improve your return on investment utilizing this promotion, especially compared to other credit cards earning points that can be converted to Aeroplan miles, like the AMEX Platinum cards.
For the above conversion, you’d transfer 50,000 MR-S to Marriott Bonvoy, netting you 60,000 Marriott Bonvoy points, which would convert to a total of 33,750 Aeroplan miles.
The AMEX Cobalt is currently offering a welcome bonus of up to 30,000 bonus MR-S points when you spend $500 in purchases each month in your first year as a new card member. With a referral, the AMEX Personal Platinum is currently offering a welcome bonus of 60,000 MR when you charge $5000.00 in purchases on your card in the first three months of card membership.
Digging deeper into your potential return
Let’s break down the promotion again, but this time looking at the conversion from MR-S and taking into account the return against actual out-of-pocket cost if you earned the points through your everyday spending. We’ll also do a comparison against the AMEX Platinum, which earns 3 MR for every dollar spent on restaurants, and the TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite, which earns 1.5 Aeroplan miles for every dollar spent on grocery, gas, and drugstore purchase. For the purposes of this comparison we assumed all spending was made in these bonus categories and that Aeroplan miles are worth about 1.5 cents Canadian.
| Spend $10,000 | Get Aeroplan Miles | Return | |
| AMEX Cobalt | 50,000 MR-S | 33,750 total miles | 5.06% |
| AMEX Personal Platinum | 30,000 MR | 30,000 total miles | 4.5% |
| TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite | 15,000 Aeroplan miles | 15,000 total miles | 2.25% |
We have provided our calculations below, for those who are interested, but as you can see the AMEX Cobalt can really boost your return on this promotion compared to other cards. You could also easily double or triple your return when you redeem those Aeroplan miles for business class fares with low taxes and fees, like on Turkish Airlines.
Bottom line
Here at DCTA, we don’t recommend transferring points speculatively, especially to frequent flyer currencies that lock you in, like Aeroplan. Once you move points into your Aeroplan account, they can’t be transferred out. A speculative transfer to Aeroplan could be even move dangerous right now because we don’t know all the details of what will happen once Air Canada fully takes over the Aeroplan program next year.
The legal stuff…
The offer is valid only on conversions received from Marriott Bonvoy by June 26, 2019 at 11:59 p.m., and the bonus miles may take up to 4 to 6 weeks to be deposited in your account.
While you can still convert you AMEX MR points to Aeroplan miles during this time, they are not eligible for the promotion and won’t received any bonus.
Our calculations
| AMEX Cobalt Spend | |||
| Spend | Get MR-S | Convert to Bonvoy | Get Aeroplan Miles |
| $10,000.00 | 50,000 | 60,000 | 20,000 |
| + 5,000 bonus (from Marriott) | |||
| + 8,750 bonus | |||
| = 33,750 total miles | |||
| ROI: 5.06% | |||
| AMEX Platinum Spend | ||
| Spend | Get MR | Convert to Aeroplan miles |
| $10,000.00 | 30,000 | 30,000 |
| ROI: 4.5% | ||
| TD Aeroplan Visa Spend | |
| Spend | Get Aeroplan Miles |
| $10,000.00 | 15,000 miles |
| ROI: 2.25% | |
About the Author: Jacob is a long time supporter of DCTA and new contributor. He got into miles and points while planning for an exchange in Southeast Asia and looking for ways to stretch his student dollars. When he isn’t travelling or helping people find creative ways to save money with miles and points he works as an international trade lawyer in Toronto.
