Which airlines let you transfer miles (including Avios) INTO hotel loyalty programmes?

Almost all hotel loyalty programmes let you transfer your points into selected frequent flyer schemes.  What is far rarer is for a frequent flyer scheme to let you transfer your miles INTO a hotel points programme.

This didn’t used to be the case.  If you go back 15 years, Hilton Honors had quite a few inbound airline partners including American Airlines.  Over the years the deals have fallen away.  

The trend may be reversing, however, with Accor Live Limitless striking multiple transfer deals with frequent flyer schemes in the last five years.

There are now four ways of converting Avios to ‘big six’ hotel points:

• Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios to Marriott Bonvoy
• Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios to Accor Live Limitless
• Finnair Plus Avios to Accor Live Limitless
• Finnair Plus Avios to IHG One Rewards (currently not available)

Let’s look at all of your options.

Of course, you can book hotels directly with your miles

Booking hotel rooms with British Airways Avios:

Many airlines let you book hotels directly using your loyalty points.  You don’t need to transfer them to a hotel loyalty programme before you can use them for a free night somewhere.

You can book hotel rooms with your Avios points via the British Airways hotel portal as this article explains.

It is not the greatest deal.  You usually receive 0.50p per Avios point when you spend them on hotels this way.  Because these are third-party bookings, you are unlikely to receive any status benefits from the hotel.  You may not even receive points on your food and drink spend depending on the chain.

The other downside is that, because the number of Avios required is based on the cash price that night, there is no arbitrage.  On a busy night you will need more points.  This is not how the better hotel loyalty schemes work.

Booking hotel rooms with Finnair Plus Avios:

Finnair has a number of partnerships with hotel groups which allow you to redeem directly for a room.

We wrote about the Scandic and Sokos deals here. I took advantage of this in Copenhagen in 2024 and got exceptional value.

In fact, if you want this article summarised in one sentence, the only way to get great value using airline miles for hotel rooms is via Finnair Avios redemptions with Scandic.

Booking hotel rooms with Virgin Points:

Virgin Atlantic allows you to redeem your Virgin Points for a selection of hotels offered by Kaligo.com.  I ran through the maths on redeeming Virgin Flying Club points via Kaligo / Ascenda in this article.  

You will get around 0.4p per Virgin Point if you spend them this way which is nowhere near as good as a premium cabin flight redemption.

There are also some Branson-owned hotels you can book directly with Virgin Points, including Necker Island. Following a recent improvement, some Virgin Hotels properties can also be booked directly with Virgin Points.

How to transfers your miles directly into hotel loyalty programmes

As far as I know, these are the transfer options from mainstream European and Middle East frequent flyer schemes which let you earn hotel points by sending over your airline miles:

Aegean Miles+Bonus points to Accor Live Limitless

This is a niche one, but I am including it for completeness.

Accor Live Limitless is the Novotel / Sofitel / Ibis / Mercure / Fairmont etc loyalty programme.

You can transfer 2,000 Aegean Miles+Bonus miles into 500 Accor Live Limitless points. 500 Accor points are worth €10 off a room booking, although the minimum redemption is 1,000. You can find out more on the Accor website here.

Emirates Skywards miles to Accor Live Limitless

This is new for 2025!

The details of the Emirates / Accor deal are here.

It is hard to recommend it unless you have a very small Emirates balance to use up or your Emirates miles are about to expire.  You need 4,000 Emirates Skywards miles to receive 1,000 Accor Live Limitless points. 

The Accor scheme is ‘fixed value’.  1,000 Accor points gets you a €20 hotel voucher.  That means you are getting €20 of hotel stay for 4,000 Emirates Skywards which is roughly 0.4p per Emirates mile.

Finnair Plus Avios to Accor Live Limitless

The details of the Finnair / Accor deal are here. 

It requires 2,300 Finnair Plus Avios to receive 500 Accor Live Limitless points.  The Accor scheme is ‘fixed value’.  1,000 Accor points get you a €20 hotel voucher.  That means you are getting €10 of hotel stay for 2,300 Avios which is roughly 0.36p per Finnair Plus Avios point.

If you really insist on converting Avios to Accor points, it is slightly better to convert via Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios. Their rate is 4,500 Avios = 1,000 Accor points compared to 4,600 Avios = 1,000 Accor points via Finnair.

You can learn how to transfer Avios from British Airways Executive Club to Finnair Plus in this article.

Finnair Plus Avios to IHG One Rewards

Finnair has, for many years, allowed you to convert Finnair Plus points (now Finnair Plus Avios) to IHG One Rewards.

The deal has now disappeared from the Finnair Plus website. I don’t know if this is a permanent or temporary change, so I have kept it on this list for now. It wasn’t an exceptional deal so little has been lost if it does not reappear.

Flying Blue miles to Accor Live Limitless

This is part of a genuinely ambitious partnership between Accor and Flying Blue, although for HfP readers it has now been overshadowed by the similar Qatar Airways Avios deal.  Once registered:

• When you stay at Accor hotels, you will earn 1 Flying Blue airline mile per €1 – on top of the Accor points you would usually earn

• When you fly with Air France or KLM, you will earn 1 Accor hotel point per €2 – on top of the Flying Blue miles you would usually earn

You can only be better off by registering for this offer.  As far as I can tell, there is no downside. Even if you have no interest in Flying Blue miles, you can convert them to Accor to earn even more Accor Live Limitless points.

You can also transfer lump sums of Flying Blue miles to Accor.  Unsurprisingly, the rate is not great:

• 4,000 Flying Blue miles = 1,000 Accor points

This means that you are swapping 4,000 Flying Blue miles for a €20 Accor hotel discount.  This is just 0.5 Eurocents per mile, which is poor.  Of course, if you have Flying Blue miles you can’t use it is better than nothing.

Our full article on the Accor and Flying Blue partnership is here.

Do note, however, that for most UK-based Head for Points readers it makes more sense to register for the two-way Avios offer with Qatar Airways Privilege Club – see below.

ITA Airways Volare points to Accor Live Limitless

This new partnership won’t last long, as ITA’s Volare programme is expected to merge with Lufthansa’s Miles & More scheme at the end of 2025.

Until then, you can transfer 4,000 Volare points into 1,000 Accor points. This gets you a €20 hotel voucher.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios to Accor Live Limitless

Qatar Airways Privilege Club – which now uses Avios as its loyalty currency – also has a two way partnership with Accor Live Limitless.  Once registered:

• When you stay at Accor hotels, you will earn 1 Avios per €1 – on top of the Accor points you would usually earn

• When you fly with Qatar Airways, you will earn 1 Accor hotel point per $2 – on top of the Avios you would usually earn

You can only be better off by registering for this offer.  There is no downside. Even if you have no interest in earning Avios from Accor hotel stays (although as a HfP reader you probably do!), you can convert them to back to Accor to earn even more Accor Live Limitless points.

You can also transfer lump sums of Avios (via Qatar Airways Privilege Club) to Accor.  Unsurprisingly, the rate is not great:

• 4,500 Avios = 1,000 Accor points

If you have no interest in Accor points, you might as well take them if you are buying Qatar Airways tickets for cash. You can always convert them back to Avios.

This is not a good way of using Avios to get free hotel stays. You are swapping 4,500 Avios for a €20 Accor hotel discount, which is just 0.37p per Avios.

Our full article on the Accor and Qatar Airways Privilege Club partnership is here.

Our article on how to link your British Airways Executive Club Avios account and your Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios account to move points back and forth is here.

Qatar Airways Privilege Club Avios to Marriott Bonvoy

This is the most recent ‘Avios to hotel’ partnership, launched in December 2024. Unfortunately, it’s not great.

The details are here. 2 Avios gets you 1 Marriott Bonvoy point.

We value Avios at 1p when used for premium cabin flights, and Marriott Bonvoy points at 0.5p. This means you would be giving up 2p of Avios to get 0.5p of Marriott points.

Now, my Bonvoy valuation is possibly too low. If you pick and choose when to redeem, you can get 1p per Marriott point. My spreadsheet of my last 9m (!) redeemed Marriott points shows I got 0.77p of value, although sometimes I valued a stay at below the cash price because the cash price was one I would never have paid. Even on that basis, however, it’s not worth giving up 2 Avios got 0.77p of Bonvoy points.

Virgin Points to Hilton Honors

Full details can be found on the Virgin Atlantic website here.  You will receive 1.5 Hilton Honors points per Virgin Point. 

Based on my 0.33p valuation of a Hilton point, you are getting 0.5p of value per Virgin Point.  This is a weak deal although, if you received the miles from business travel, you may be insensitive to that.

It is certainly a poor deal if you obtained your Virgin Points via credit card spend, Tesco Clubcard or American Express Membership Rewards transfers, because those miles had an opportunity cost.  The only exception would be if you needed to top up your Hilton Honors balance before a redemption.

Virgin Points to IHG One Rewards

Full details can be found on the Virgin Atlantic website here.  The transfer rate is 1 IHG One Rewards point for 1 Virgin Point.   IHG points can be redeemed for Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Hotel Indigo etc hotels.

Based on my 0.4p valuation of an IHG One Rewards point, this deal is also not great.

As IHG One Rewards is not an Amex Membership Rewards partner, routing American Express points to Virgin Points to IHG One Rewards points is a potential compromise – albeit one which does not offer the best value for your American Express points.

And don’t forget ….

Club Eurostar points to Accor Live Limitless

Whilst this article is focused on airline schemes, it would be remiss not to remind you that Club Eurostar points can also be transferred to Accor Live Limitless – details here.

It’s also worth mentioning ….

I should also briefly mention the partnership between United Airlines and Marriott Bonvoy, even though this article is in theory restricted to EMEA schemes.  If you have Marriott Bonvoy Titanium Elite status, which is not many people admittedly, you can move up to 100,000 United MileagePlus miles per year into Marriott Bonvoy.  You can learn more about the Marriott and United RewardsPlus partnership in this article.

Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer also has a partnership with Marriott Bonvoy. The transfer rate of 2:1 from KrisFlyer to Bonvoy is not attractive unless you have expiring Singapore Airlines miles.

For completeness I should note that, on top of the partnerships above, Accor Live Limitless also accepts transfer IN from the following airlines:

• Azul
• Hainan Airlines
• Japan Airlines
• Juneyao Air
• LATAM
• Qantas
• Singapore Airlines
• Smiles (GOL and others)

You can find out more on the Accor website here.

Conclusion

There are a few ways of moving airline miles into hotel points.  The value is generally poor, however, and it is only recommended if you are topping up a hotel account or emptying out an airline one.