Transferring Membership Rewards for the Delta Vacation Package Promo
We have covered the Delta Vacation package promo a few times now. And Shawn wrote that they just extended the deal until September 6th, which is awesome! Shawn has been a booking machine with this promo and I think he will share some tips he learned along the way over the next day or too. I on the other hand have not booked anything. I have my trips already pretty much booked 12 months out. But all of this excitement did get me wondering if transferring Membership Rewards for the Delta Vacation package promo was worth it?
What Are Membership Rewards Worth?
Valuations are always a personal thing. Some people may value Membership Rewards over Chase Ultimate Rewards and vice versa. Your valuations will depend on which of their transfer partners you use the most often. If you are a Marriott or IHG lover, first of all please reconsider, then you may not value Ultimate Rewards that much because Hyatt is their most valuable partner. But if you frequent Hyatt then those points could be golden to you.
Having said all of that I will say that I value Membership Rewards around 1.5 cents a piece. That may be a little on the low end but that is where I place them. On the surface the Delta Vacations promotion sounds like a winner at 2 cents a piece but let’s take a look and see how that really plays out.
Test Bookings
I am trying to get a group of my Detroit meetup regulars to head to New Orleans for a meetup/trip in February. If it comes together I will let everyone know so that we can try to open it up for all of our readers. Here is a sample booking I searched out:
As you can see the price for one person would be 44,000 Delta Skymiles ($881.85/$0.02).
When you book it for two people the price is only 58,000 Skymiles total ($1158.46/$0.02). Only a jump of 14,000 miles to add a second person. That is because the hotel price stays the same, but that is still really cheap for an additional flight.
What Kind of Value Are You Getting?
I picked the lowest priced 4 star hotel that came up in this example. When I checked the cash prices for the trip the same flight is $347 per person and the hotel would cost $553. That is a total of $1247. A return of 2.15 cents per mile for two people. The value is 2.04 cents per mile for one person. This also doesn’t take into account that you would earn miles on the flights since it is considered a cash booking. That brings another 5-6% back in value. You should also take into account that a similar hotel may come in cheaper but I don’t think it would be much cheaper. I checked other airline’s flights and this was the cheapest one.
But what about the points prices?
The Marriott would be 105,000 points for the 3 nights. If you value Marriott points at $0.008 each that is $840 in value. So cash is the better option there.
The flights are 29,000 Skymiles per person. You didn’t read that wrong, booking these flights as an award would cost as many miles as it would to book the package WITH a hotel! Talk about value.
Link to Promotion
Final Thoughts
It appears that it is worth transferring Membership Rewards for the Delta Vacation package promo. For most people at least. If you use your MR points solely for international first class then you will probably get better than 2 cents per point going that route. But if you want to get a flight and hotel for a great deal this deal may be the way to go.
Be sure to price everything out individually because the prices could be different. And you may not be getting the full 2 cents per mile if the prices are out of whack on Delta’s website. I would use Google Flights to find cheap Delta flights to where you want to go and then go to the Delta vacation page.
Writing this up has given me a serious case of FOMO though and now I want to book something 😂. Have you booked anything yet or are you planning to use the Delta Vacation package promo at all? Let me know in the comments.
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I don’t get all the math but I redeemed 235k of my Northwest miles for my family of 4 to Bangkok this summer. I feel thats is a good value considering I’ve been trying to get rid of these miles since the merger. Also my hotel is a suite at the Hilton. Starting to think I should transfer AMX and book another one.
If you find something that makes sense I think transferring MR points to book it still offers value. And that is a long time to hold onto those miles Brad 🙂
I’ve had an Amex card for over 20 years and have somehow saved 100,000 points. Today I booked a Disney vacation for four nights at the Grand Floridian with one room and three flights for me, my wife and son for $3800, transferred my Amex miles and got $2000 off, so 1800 balance owed, not bad for the GF, I think. Saved for 20 years for four days. Crikey!
Disney is that expensive! 🙂