Awhile ago I created a master list of all the transfer bonuses American Express has ever offered (and a similar list for Citi). I thought I’d look through the list to see if there is any patterns we can use to determine if it’s likely that a transfer bonus will be offered at a certain time.
- Hawaiian Airlines has offered a 25% bonus in June in both 2016 and 2017.
- Virgin Atlantic has offered a 25-30% bonus in April/May in 2015, 2016 & 2017.
- SPG has offered a 50% transfer bonus in 2014, 2015, 2016.
- Virgin America has offered 25% bonuses + status in September of 2015 & 2016. Not sure if they will offer something again this year given the partnership ends in October, but might be worth waiting for.
Those are the obvious ones that stand out to me. Plenti offered a 50% transfer bonus last year, I suspect that was to try and get more people using Plenti in general. British Airways seems to offer frequent transfer bonuses but the dates have varied a lot in previous years (e.g July – September this year, August – October last year and then December/January in 2014/2015). Personally I think before transferring Membership Rewards points it’s worth checking the master page to see if they have offered a transfer bonus and possibly holding off to transfer until they do offer a bonus unless you have an immediate need for the miles/points.
in general, its nice to look at historical value but past performance does not dictate future bonuses. the game as changed too quickly at an exponential rate that nothing is status quo anymore. 50% bonus last year vs this 50% year mean nothing when you have a major deval. % are the same but the numbers are now different.
The 50% plenti pts was nice
Sure was, hope it comes back
I only have one datapoint on this, but I suspect that there is some adverse selection involved. Last time I took advantage of the British Airways bonus, it was followed by a devaluation of their points the month after the transfer window ended.
That’s what I’m worried about with this BA xfer bonus, but it feels like it JUST got devalued last year…
They are gonna have to cut corners somewhere due to all these system outages theyve been having. I only transfer to BA if I have a very specific redemtion in mind. The bonus is not enough for me to speculate on this currency.
Is there a pattern? There isn’t supposed to be one. But leave it to Will to find one 🙂