Help! Using MRP for airline travel

[Lydlady]

I'm trying to plan my first trip using MRP. I know what hotels I want to stay in. I don't qualify for a travel package though because I only wanted to stay 4 nights in one location and 3 nights in another location.

What's the best way to do this? I'm totally lost. The rep told me to sign up with a FF program first with one of the airlines. Any suggestions? There are different ones that fly to where I want to go. Also I don't understand how the conversion works with the airline miles to MRP points. I'm wanting to fly from LAX to either Burlington, VT or to Portland, ME.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[Bill4728]

Most Tugger seem to feel that trading your pts for miles is only a good idea when you buy a travel certificate. When you buy a travel cert., you can then buy airmile at a rate of 1 MR pt=1 airmile. Not a great deal but OK. If you just want to buy airmile outside of the travel certificate your rate jumps 2 MR pt=1 airmile which is a terrible deal.

IMHO, use your MR pts for hotel stays and don't convert to airmiles.

 

[lll1929]

My suggestion is the following:

1. Determine which airlines fly to your destination
2. Go to those airline websites and check the rates (reward miles) needed for your particular itinirary. For me, American Airlines requires the fewest miles, but it it depends on if you fly business class/first class economy etc.
3. Once you figure out the airline that has your itinary for the fewest miles, create a rewards account with that airline
4. When you cash in MRP for miles, have them transferred to the airline account you created.

I agree that travel pkgs are the best way to maximize usage of your mrp.

Other folks may do something different, but thats my 2 cents worth.

Good Luck

 

[KathyPet]

Using Marriott reward points just for airline miles without a hotel package is usually not a good use of reward points. I would look at a site called www.kayak.com. This site will allow you to search for flights on a variety of airlines to search for the cheapest fares. You can enter LAX to PWM (Code for Portland) and enter your dates and even select how many stops you are willing to take. THe only airline not on this website is American but all of the others are included. Continental has a lot of flights and most of what I saw was under $400 R/T. I would not waste my reward points on airline miles for a flight that would only cost me less than $400.00

 

[Latravel]

That's exactly what we do. We are going to JFK in Feb and instead of using points for the mileage, we are paying for airfare since United is only $299 round trip. At that point it's not worth using points since the airfare is so inexpensive.

 

[Zac495]

Another thing - if you know you can use those hotel certificates another time - you could buy the travel package, get the FF miles, use hotel points for this trip and the certificate for another. The only issue is that with the changes occurring in January, it's hard to know if you need to decide where you'll use that certificate by January 15th.

I wouldn't use my points for miles unless you're buying a package - and now's the time to do it if you have 250K Marriott points - before January 15th

 

[GrayFal]

Using Marriott reward points just for airline miles without a hotel package is usually not a good use of reward points. I would look at a site called www.kayak.com. This site will allow you to search for flights on a variety of airlines to search for the cheapest fares. You can enter LAX to PWM (Code for Portland) and enter your dates and even select how many stops you are willing to take. THe only airline not on this website is American but all of the others are included. Continental has a lot of flights and most of what I saw was under $400 R/T. I would not waste my reward points on airline miles for a flight that would only cost me less than $400.00

American is back on Kayak.....their 'dispute' is over.

 

[Lydlady]

Thank you for the suggestions