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Your ability to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to another account is a great feature of the Marriott Bonvoy loyalty program. Not all hotel programs allow points transfers between members. Being able to pool your points makes it easy to work together for a single redemption or to take advantage of one person's elite status.
Even better, Marriott has made it easier to transfer points between members, releasing an online transfer tool. This is a massive improvement to the process, as you previously had to call Marriott to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to another account. Before we walk you through how to transfer points, there are some key things you should know about Marriott Bonvoy points transfers.
Marriott Bonvoy Points Transfers – An Overview
Here is what you should know about transferring Marriott Bonvoy points to another account:
- You can transfer a maximum of 100,000 points per year from your account.
- You can receive a maximum of 500,000 points per year.
- The minimum transfer amount is 1,000 points.
- You must transfer in increments of 1,000 points.
- Both accounts involved in the transfer must be in good standing.
- Transfers are restricted to accounts that have been open for at least 90 days.
- When you transfer points to an inactive account, the transaction will go through, but the points will then be canceled!
One exception to the above requirements is in regard to accounts open less than 90 days. Accounts less than 30 days old aren't eligible to send or receive points. For accounts open longer than 30 days but fewer than 90 days, you can only initiate and receive transfers if some reward activity has been credited to the account. This includes a stay or any other points earning, such as from a Marriott Bonvoy credit card.
Do points transfers extend the expiry date of Marriott points?
Sadly, points transfers do not count as qualifying activity, which means that they do not extend the expiration date of your points. Similarly, gifted points will not extend the expiration of your Marriott Bonvoy points. However, purchasing Marriott Bonvoy points will extend the expiration of the points in your account.
Your Marriott Bonvoy points will expire after 24 months of inactivity. If your Marriott Bonvoy points are about to expire, you'll need to earn, redeem, or purchase points. You can find many ways to extend the expiration of your Marriott points.
Along these lines, make sure you don't transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to an inactive account. If you do, all the points will be lost!
Related: Do Marriott Bonvoy Points Expire?
How to Transfer Marriott Bonvoy Points to Another Account
Assuming your account is eligible to transfer points (based on the criteria above), here's how to initiate a Bonvoy points transfer. First, sign in using your Bonvoy account email and password at the points transfer page. You'll then see this screen:
Here, you'll enter the information for the person receiving the points. You'll need to provide their first and last name, Bonvoy number, and transfer amount. All of this must exactly match the receiving member's account details. Then, check the required confirmation, reading the fine print if you'd like. The gist of it is that you're relinquishing all rights to the points; they will become the recipient's. Finally, click the “Transfer Now” button.
Expect points transfers to take up to 24 hours. There is no fee to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to another account.
Unlike some other programs, you cannot initiate transfers from the receiving or “pooling” account. Also, note that the Marriott Bonvoy app does not offer points transfer functionality; you'll have to use the website.
Can I call to transfer points?
Marriott isn't clear on this. I'd assume you can still call to transfer points, as this used to be the only way to transfer Marriott Bonvoy points to another member. However, the online tool makes things far easier, and this is what Marriott now directs you to use.
If there is an issue with a transfer, or the online tool isn't working, call Marriott Bonvoy Guest Services at the number listed in your account. Or call the main service line at 800-627-7468. Make sure you have both sets of account information handy.
When should you consider transferring Marriott points?
Here are four situations where you should consider transferring Marriott points to another account:
- When points are about to expire. This is when points in the sending account are about to expire. Maybe you have a friend or family member who has a small stash of Marriott points but rarely adds to them or uses them. If they are about to expire, they can transfer them to you. Just don't do the reverse, as sending points to an inactive or soon-to-be inactive account will cause you to lose points.
- Consolidating points for a redemption. Heading to an expensive resort that costs a ton of points? Consolidate points from multiple family members into one account to make a single redemption for your next vacation. This is useful when you are booking multiple rooms, also; you'll all be on one reservation.
- To take advantage of one person's elite status. If one person has Marriott Platinum status, for example, you can transfer points to their account to make the redemption. You'll then receive their elite status benefits, such as free breakfast and a potential room upgrade, during your stay. You can easily receive Marriott Bonvoy elite status through Marriott's suite of co-branded credit cards.
- To take advantage of the fifth night free. Have enough points for two nights of vacation in one spouse's account and enough for two nights in the other? Don't make two reservations! Transfer your points to the other person's account and take advantage of the “fifth night free” benefit. Whenever you book a five-night award stay, you'll pay for just four nights.
Final Thoughts
Marriott's points transfer policy is well positioned to avoid members abusing the transfer rules. The 100,000 limit for transfers from an account is enough to let you make a lower category redemption or top off accounts that are just a few thousand short of a travel goal. The 500,000 limit on receiving points enables families with points spread across multiple accounts to consolidate their points into a single account to redeem for an extended stay. Likewise, you can consolidate points to take advantage of one family member's Bonvoy elite status.
If you want to read the full details on Marriott points transfer, refer to Section 2.8 in the program terms and conditions at Marriott.com.
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Am I able to transfer my Marriott Bonvoy points into Hyatt? If so, how do I do it? Thanks
S.
Do the points have to be transferred in increments of 1000 too? I called to transfer 57,030 and when I logged in to check the next day, they only transferred 57k, leaving 30 points in the account. Not a big deal, but just wondering if they typed it wrong or if this is an actual policy.
Ah, that’s a bummer. You should be able to transfer points in any increments, as long as you transfer at least 3,000 points. I’ve successfully topped off my wife’s Asiana Club account with exactly 6,240 Bonvoy points = 2,080 miles so that we had exactly the number of miles needed for a redemption.
Thanks for clarifying the rules. Was able to transfer points from my wife’s account (which was expiring) to mine!
Is it better for my wife to merge Bonvoy accounts with mine or just gift 100K points and keep her own separate account? She has about 160K points and I have about 460K and am Gold Elite. If she merges accounts with mine do all 160K points come with it?
You can’t merge accounts belonging to two different people. Only transfer the points from one to the other.
I am about to try and consolidate some of the points earned from other members of the family, and I wondered if anyone had any luck circumventing the 100k limit via uncombined accounts (ie anyone who has their previous SPG and Marriott linked but not combined).
It would work something like this:
A (former SPG) 100k > B (former SPG)
A (Marriott) 100k > B (Marriott)
then have B either do an internal transfer between the linked accounts or combine them to access the full 200k.
I’m pretty certain it would work with unlinked accounts, but didn’t know if Bonvoy’s IT would flag the linked nature and create a hard cap of 100k in total for the two accounts.
Sorry…I mean can either the account owner with the points or the one receiving them make the transfer (assuming either has both sets of acct info)?
Points can only be transferred from the account holding the points. You cannot initiate a transfer from the account receiving the points.
Does it matter whether it is the point receiver or receivee requesting the transfer from Marriott? Thank you
Sorry Pam, not sure I understand the question. Does it affect the number of points you can transfer or receive?
Sorry bout that, I mean can either the account owner who is giving away the points or the one receiving them arrange the transfer (assuming either has all the info needed on the other)?
With SPG you could transfer any amount of points that you desired with no limit, from ONE member to another (who shared the same home address). 5,000,000 points if you wanted. Also, the transfer used to be done online, and there was no charge.
100K a year is nothing, even 500K is too low and you would need 5 members to transfer the points.
SPG was by far a much better program than Bonvoy, what a pity.
Can you get around the 100,000-mile cap by:
A -> B 100
A -> C 100
B -> C 100
with C ending up with 200?
No, as the ‘from’ account can only transfer 100K points. If A + B both had 100K, they could transfer that to C as you can receive up to 500K points per year.
good to know that this can be used to get “reimbursed” for friends/family.
Thanks for the info, this is useful. Interesting that there is a minimum amount of time the account needs to have been open for.
Marriott just announced that they are rebranding their rewards program to Marriott Bonvoy effective February 13 and combining the Ritz and SPG into this new program.
quite useful for Gold/Plat. members to top up other accounts. Good to know.
Does Marriott ever allow transferring free nights from one account to another vs points?
No, free nights are non-transferrable.
We have a Marriott stay in the near future and I wanted to prepay so that we could apply that toward the spend on an SPG American Express card. I’ve had to contact different people and jump through various hoops able to make that happen. At the moment, it seems that I have to fill out a form authorizing the credit card to be charged prior to arrival and I can prepay. One person told me that it would be through a third-party and yet another agent told me it would be direct to Marriott. Crazy confusion. Why does this have to be so difficult?
I don’t necessarily like this policy. I thought the legacy SPG policy was better where you could share unlimited points between you and your partner (provided you share the same address). I think Marriott should allow greater than 100K transfers for folks living at the same address.
Great to share points.
Could come in handy. Thanks for the heads up. Merry Christmas.
thanks for the info
I did not see the option to combine accounts from web. I called the number 801-468-4000 and get it done.
Thanks for the information on how to combine Marriott accounts. There are always some things that can only be accomplished with a phone call.
How do you make this work? I have tried without success
Lots of guidance in the article itself, including this key sentence: “To initiate a transfer, call Marriott Rewards Guest Services on 1-801-468-4000 (it pays to have both sets of account information handy).”
This is good news. Too bad their IT department doesn’t keep up with changes and allow this to be accomplished on the website.
I know, it really is shocking
had to convert my marriott points when they started the expiration dates, so no go for me.
It sounds like such a pain to call in. Are there plans to implement an online transfer program?
I want this too!
Thanks a lot for providing all the info. I guess I got a good agent. Just tried it and it worked with no issue…
Great article, Amex earn for me is still the easiest for these points.
Great info thanks.
Thank you for clarifying this information.
Good information and positive update by Marriott. Wish they would allow unlimited between people in the same household though.
With the points from the “29 Days” promo just posting – I think ITS THE PERFECT time to attempt a family transfer to mop up the odd 1000 or so points .
I called them today and after a crazy hold the agent had no idea how to do this and transferred me to someone else who kept on saying limit was 50k. Marriot must really get their act together!
Thanks for sharing this. I took advantage of this option.
I’m glad transfers can be made and certainly respect the desire to put a cap in place to prevent abuse.
The detail and recap here is very much appreciated. Which one of the rewards plus hotel and air packages do you consider to be best value? I’m making the assumption that the Rewards Plus with United is better value than any of the other airlines
It depends on your goals and destination. There is no “best”
Useful guide. Now I just need more Marriott points ?
Thanks. Didn’t know about the e-certificate.
I’m confused. For $10 iI can transfer points from my husband’s account to mine? Seems less prohibitive than airline sharing miles
And if you have gold elite status, no fee. Yes, far less prohibitive.
I’m onto Marriot Reward team now – there’s no charge to transfer from any account no Gold+ status required
This is a great recap. I learned some new points to this program.
Wonderful news that Marriott upped the limit from 50K per year to 100K per year.
That makes a huge difference
Marriott points are great to transfer to airlines thanks to them absorbing the SPG airline transfer bonus!
Did this last week and it worked fine!
Although I agree, it would be better if one could do it online.
good update. thx.
Thanks for the guide!
The new Marriott transfer option is much more convenient than the old option.
Point transfer cap is too low @ 100k. Going to have to multiple family accounts to transfer & consolidate.
Talk about timing… With the points from the “29 Days” promo just posting to mine, and the wife’s accounts, I was just thinking to myself today that I’d have to look into this. Thanks for the answer!
Do the points need to be transferred in 1000 increments? Also does an old SPG account have to be updated to a Marriott account before the points can be moved?
There are no such thing as SPG accounts — they’re all Marriott accounts. My last transfer was before the merger and was not in a 1,000 point increment, but I’m not sure if that is a rule.
Thanks for this info, I hope it can be done online soon.
I think this would be a good way to get some airline miles for another users account. Transfer the Marriott points to them, then they can transfer those points to an airline. Or is that prohibited in the terms and conditions? The caveat being that it could take weeks for the points to be transferred to miles by Marriott.
I read the article and received a notice that I “commented too fast”. I’m not sure what that means, but it seems like you are trying to prevent people from leaving comments without reading the article, which I understand. However, if that is the case, it is clear you have your time filter set too short. What about people who are only interested in part of the article and read based on the section heading only what they are interested in?
So beneficial to have family sharing but it would be so much better if it could be done over the internet or with knowledgeable customer service reps.
I think the max cap for point transfer is too low.
They need to increase the cap by like 10 times.
Great clarification of these rules.
Too bad there is a fee (even if only 10$) but its good to know there is the option to transfer points – I didn’t realize there was. This will allow me to transfer points and then stay with status instead of my none status.
No fee if you have Marriott credit card. If you don’t have one get one for the sign up bonus.
transfer so long as all your other data does not go along with it
I have only dived into SPG points in the past. Maybe it’s time to start participating in other hotel chains’ points systems.
This is useful information to have. I was thinking of going with Marriott and this helped me make a decision.
Other than points earnt from stays, are there any other ways of extending your account?
Please give this a read: https://awardwallet.com/blog/do-marriott-points-expire/
Nice to have this option
To their credit, loyalty programs seem to be getting better with their allowances on points pooling. Kudos to them.
Thanks for the info!
I appreciate the update. I’m really surprised that Marriott hasn’t integrated points transfers into their website.
I’ll add Marriott to my ‘family pooling’ list, which contains Jetblue and Hyatt.
Thanks. I’ll add this to my ‘family pooling’ list that also contains Jetblue and Hyatt.
This is good information. Marriott should really allow this to be done on-line. There is no good reason to limit transfers to 100,000 points.
Online would make it a lot easier!
We just cashed out and abandoned Marriott. It’s too difficult to try and maintain both Marriott and Hilton and at the end of the day Hilton has more value in their credit card to us. It wasn’t great value but 66,000 Marriott points gave us well over 20,000 United miles plus a bonus. No regrets here.
Good advice in order to consolidate my account with the account of my friend.
I’m trying to transfer 100,000 points to my son as part of his wedding gift. The first Marriott Rewards agent I spoke to told me I could only transfer 50,000 points, so I provided my son’s account number and she quickly made the transfer. After I hung up I did some research and learned that the limit had been increased to 100,000. Thus I called back and got a different Marriott Rewards agent, Anita – – a huffy bureaucrat. She told me I could not transfer points to my son without him being present with me to authorize Marriott accessing his account! I told her I had just transferred 50,000 10 minutes earlier. She said the other agent obviously didn’t know Marriott policies. Gotta love the Marriott Team!! I plan to call again and see if there is a real “customer service “ representative. I am a Platinum Elite member.
Yes, limit is 100k per year. It used to be 50k, and most agents dont seem to know the new rules.
It happened to me as well, some agents transferred by me just giving the member ID, which i think shouldnt be possible.. whereas other agent asked for the person whom i was transferring from to speak on the phone.
And I do agree, since the merge, must agent dont know what they are talking about.
This was helpful, thanks!
What happens if you subsequently cancel a reward that you had points transferred for. Do they automatically go back to yours or the original account?
they go back into the account that booked the award; so yours.
Thanks for clarifying!
Any idea if it is possible? I havent had any luck recently.
I’m Plat Premium Elite. I’ve had two different PPE operators tell me they can’t transfer more than 50k points from my wife’s account to redeem a 240k award I have on hold – which took forever to clear. One operator hung up when I pusher to recheck. Second one I asked for supervisor transfer and ended up in hold loop – gave up after 10 mins. Really frustrating.
All agents assume that the limit is 50k, which was the case pre-merge. Now, if you check the T&C, it states a limit of 100k. And most importantly, the system allows it. I know because in September i transferred exactly 100k from one account to another. When we tried more, the system denied it, but under 100k it went through fine.
Would you send a link for that information please?
Share your points
Now you can share your points with any other member.
Transfer 1,000 points or more—up to a maximum of 100,000 points per year.
Just contact Member Support at (888) 625-4988 to start sharing.
at the bottom of the page https://www.marriott.com/loyalty/redeem.mi
Is there a fee to make the transfer?
$10 unless you have gold elite status or higher. With that level of status it is free.
So good only with a reasonable quantity of points.
Do you know if a member without a status initiates a transfer to a Platinum account, whether they need to pay 10 bucks? I guess it only works for free the other way round?
Is the transfer done for a booking ( after the limit transfer per user has been reached ) still allowed under the new terms ? I called twice today and agents were unsure, and i also checked the T&C and couldn’t find any references to it, unfortunately.
still allowed? I didn’t know it was ever allowed once you passed the limit.
Yep, it was allowed, check on this page, there is a extract from the old T&C.
Oh yes, you can do the once per year exception for a specific redemption — this has not changed. That is the only exception.
Actually it seems to have changed. It is nowhere to be found in the new T&C. I called yesterday as well, spoke to 3 diff agents, all said it was not possible.
That is counter to the discussions I’ve had. I haven’t had the discussion in the past month.
Just went through a similar experience. Should be easily accomplished on the website but instead, you have to call and waste far too much time sitting on hold. Love Marriot and the rewards program but I pray they update their online capabilities for the convenience of the customer
I have been on hold for almost an hour and a half trying to transfer 7,000 points from my account to my son in law who is trying to plan a surprise trip for his wife. Can someone help me?? I have his account number and mine. can I do this through e-mail??
You need to do this with Marriott directly. We aren’t Marriott, nor do we work for Marriott, so we can’t help. Sorry!
Thank you for this info. It helped in transferring orphan points that would have expired in my son’s no longer used account.
I am a Platinum and used my points on 2 recent trips. I am to receive 1/2 of the points from 2 other Marriott members…we used mine as I have Platinum and thought I had better upgrade power. If I use the points under their name/number can I still travel as a Platinum or will I only receive coverage for their status…one is Silver and one is Gold. Thank you.
You’ll receive YOUR benefits as you are the guest staying in the room.