Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

Why transferring hotel points to a friend is good (and transferring airline miles is getting better)

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Is it possible to transfer hotel loyalty points to a friend or partner?  Can you transfer the points for free?  In most cases, the answer is ‘Yes’.

Airline schemes are not like this.  Most frequent flyer schemes allow you to pay to transfer miles to a friend but it is usually a terrible deal.

The price is often only modestly cheaper than buying miles outright but no new miles are being created. You are paying a high fee simply for the loyalty programme to move them from one account to another. That said, both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have made transfers MUCH more attractive recently.

How to transfer hotel loyalty points

British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are exceptions where airline mile transfers ARE a good deal

Both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have taken big steps in the last two years to make miles transfers good value. Such good value, in fact, that I’ve used both services myself.

Transferring Avios:

Here is the British Airways page for Avios transfers You can now transfer 60,000 Avios per calendar year to another person for a FLAT FEE of £50.

A Gold member can transfer 60,000 per year to another person for free.

You don’t even need to pay £50. If you and the other person are both willing to open Finnair Plus accounts, you can transfer Avios between you for just €10 for an unlimited amount. This HfP article explains how it works.

Of course, even paying €10 may be unnecessary. Remember that:

  • you can issue a reward ticket for someone else from your account, and
  • you could create a Household Account for free and pool your miles that way

Transferring Virgin Points:

In 2023 Virgin Atlantic also hugely improved its transfer procedure.

It couldn’t be easier. You can now transfer as many Virgin Points as you wish to another member for a flat £10 fee.

Frankly, it’s a great deal. This replaced the old shockingly poor pricing which was £7.50 per 1,000 Virgin Points plus a £15 adminstration fee. Moving 50,000 Virgin Points would have cost £390 and now it costs £10.

This HfP article explains how it works. The page to do transfers is here.

Apart from British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, none of the airlines we cover on HfP has a free or low-cost way of transferring large quantities of miles from one person to another.

How can you transfer hotel loyalty points to someone else?

With the hotel loyalty schemes, it is a totally different game.

Most of the hotel schemes make it very easy to transfer points around – and you often don’t need to pay.

How to transfer hotel loyalty points

Here are some examples:

Accor Live Limitless

Accor Live Limitless points cannot be transferred.

Best Western Rewards

The FAQ on the UK website says:

“Yes. Points can be transferred between accounts that share the same physical address. To arrange a point transfer, please contact our Rewards Team at bwr.service@bestwestern.com”

Hilton Honors

Hilton Honors allows FREE transfers via a service it calls points pooling.  You can send up to 500,000 points, albeit across no more than six transactions, and receive up to 2 million points per calendar year.

It works well.  Every time that my wife has a Hilton stay I sweep the points across to my account, partly to keep things tidy and partly because I have higher Hilton status than her and it makes sense that redemptions are booked via my account.  You can find out more on this page of the Hilton Honors website.

IHG One Rewards

You can transfer IHG One Rewards points to anyone else for a flat fee of $5 per 1,000.  I did this once to top up my Mum’s account when she was 1,000 points short of a redemption – in this scenario it was $5 well spent (buying 1,000 would have been $13.50).  The link to arrange transfers is here.

How to transfer hotel loyalty points

Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott Bonvoy allows you to transfer your points to anyone, for free.  Full details are here.

There is a cap of 100,000 points per year.  Transfers can now be done online.

Radisson Rewards

The split of Radisson Rewards into Radisson Rewards Americas and Radission Rewards (ie rest of the world) has led to a change in the ‘sharing’ rules.

The new rule is that an account can make or receive up to five transfers per month, with a maximum inbound flow of 100,000 points per month.

You must have been a member of Radisson Rewards for 30 days in order to send or receive points. There is no longer any requirement to have elite status to make transfers. Details are on the website here (see 6d).

World of Hyatt

Hyatt points can be transferred to any other member for FREE by filling in this PDF form and emailing it. You can only make a transfer once every 30 days. In theory you are meant to redeem them as soon as the transfer is complete but this is not enforced.

On my recent experience, transfers take 3-4 days to get done so this isn’t something to leave until the last minute.

I have had problems in the past with the service centre insisting that both the giving and receiving accounts must have had a qualifying Hyatt stay during the previous 12 months.  This is what it means when the PDF form says that both accounts must be ‘active’.

Other people have not had this issue, but be aware that it is a risk. I would not recommend doing this to get around the low annual limit on buying Hyatt points unless both accounts have had a stay in the last year, just in case.

PS.  It is worth knowing that Club Eurostar also lets you transfer points to anyone for free within annual limits.  We wrote this article on how to transfer Club Eurostar points to another person.


best hotel loyalty promotions

Hotel offers update – February 2025:

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.

Want to buy hotel points?

  • Hilton Honors is offering an 80%-100% bonus when you buy points – no closing date is given. Click here to buy.
  • Marriott Bonvoy is offering a 45% bonus when you buy points by 30th March 2025. Click here to buy.

Comments (22)

  • Phillip says:

    I think this is probably the only BA Gold perk I’ll miss, going for OW Emerald with another airline and not BA moving forward.

  • L Allen says:

    Marriott gives you the option to gift or transfer. The former costs money ($175 for 14k points) the latter is free. The app directs you towards gifting whereas you have to find the right URL for transfers, as I discovered on Friday when sending points over to a friend.

  • Yarki says:

    Erm, sign up for IHG Business Rewards for free and you can transfer IHG rewards points for free. Anyone paying the fee to transfer is a mug.

    • Andy says:

      Perhaps a dumb question but does both the business and the employee earn points with IHG Business Rewards or just the business (wasn’t clear from the IHG site)

    • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

      They do verify you are a business though!

      Fraud is not the way to go here.

      • Phillip says:

        They don’t. In fact, I was encouraged by IHG to sign up as a business when I simply asked about making bookings for others. No mention of being a business. The Ts and Cs are loose as to what qualifies.

        And yes, both earn but the booker earns at a lower rate, although there are often many double points promotions.

    • SammyJ says:

      How do you actually do it? I’ve tried and it still wants to charge, can’t actually find the bit in the T&Cs that says it’s free either to ask them about it!

  • ringingup says:

    The Marriott transfer tool has been broken for many people for months unfortunately:(

  • John says:

    The info on IHG is outdated. Diamonds and members of IHG Business Awards can transfer free-of-charge.
    And basically everyone with the possible exception of infants can sign-up for IHG Business Awards, it’s free.

    • Rob says:

      If you have a qualifying business.

      • SammyJ says:

        How do you access that feature? I’ve set up business rewards and all it asked was whether I book for other people (which I do) but I can’t find the bit that distinguishes between Business Rewards for people who book for others, and Business Rewards for proper businesses to activate the free points transfers?

      • Yarki says:

        Wrong. From the T&Cs:
        73. Membership in IHG Business Rewards is available to individuals who are either corporate bookers, business travel/meetings agents or individual bookers, subject to the following conditions:
        […]
        c. An individual booker is a person who books Qualifying Spend at Participating Hotels on their own behalf or on behalf of someone else.

  • Neil says:

    Very helpful, thank you. Will definitely pool some of my other half’s Hilton points.
    Slightly off topic question, if I book multiple rooms for our family holiday, do I get points for all the rooms or just the one I stay in? And do different loyalty programs have different rules (I’m guessing yes but don’t want to assume)?

  • Inman says:

    I got a rather silly question. There are people out there who sell avios etc. thru *bay and other marketplaces. Is it something that airlines allow? Is there a risk in buying them?
    (Apologies if this is against the rules of the site, but my question is genuine. Thx.)

  • Jimmy says:

    Anyone ever for Radisson points to successfully transfer to another account?. I get an assortment of error message – “insufficient points balance” or “ this account has exceed number of transfers” all of which are not true.

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