Aeroplan, until April 27th, is running a transfer bonus promotion. Historically, these run twice a year, with the last two being in November 2014 and May 2014. The bonus is for miles and points from other programs transferred into the Aeroplan program. Unfortunately, American Express points such as those you can earn from the American Express Business Gold Rewards Card, which offers a huge 40,000 point signup bonus, is excluded from the promotion. See the complete details of the American Express offer in this post.
Aeroplan Transfer Bonus
You’ll get a bonus from the combined amount of miles and points you transfer to Aeroplan, as follows:
Aeroplan Transfer Bonus
If you convert at those amounts, you’ll get a 20% bonus, except for converting 100,000 miles which gives a 25% bonus. This Aeroplan transfer bonus is pretty ordinary. Most hotel partners as well as some other partners are included. Note that programs which directly deposit into Aeroplan, such as the co-branded TD Aeroplan Visa Infinite, will not qualify for the promotion. Similar to the last time they ran it, I would not convert hotel points to Aeroplan since generally the conversion ratios are fairly poor. The bonus isn’t strong enough to change my spending patterns although it is a nice bonus for people who already are planning to convert points to Aeroplan.
Aeroplan Transfer Bonus Participating Partners
The only program I would consider Starwood is where you already get a 1:1.25 conversion rate with 20k increments. If you are earning SPG points with the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express, which already offers a 20k bonus, that means you’re essentially earning 1.56 Aeroplan points if you transfer at that ratio. 80,000 SPG points converted will yield 125,000 Aeroplan miles. That’s enough to get you a round-trip in First Class to Europe, a good value especially if you combine it with a capped fuel surcharge trick when redeeming on Lufthansa First Class. It also might make sense to use this transfer bonus if topping up from an account where you had limited use for your hotel points. You should weigh out your options before you convert as there’s reversing the transfers.
Will you be converting into Aeroplan miles?
—
Let’s connect: Twitter | Facebook | Instagram
Actually, considering the generally accepted higher value of SPG points vs MR/Aeroplan points, I’m wondering if this bonus actually closes the gap mathematically. I did it back in late 2013, but that was before I fully understood what my SPG points were worth.
As a caveat, what if you have to top-off your points to meet one of the thresholds?
The valuation of SPG is dependent of how much you value Aeroplan and AMEX relatively. With this promotion, the value of SPG doesn’t increase for me because I wouldn’t be partaking in the transfer.