How to Combine Hotel Points With Your Friends and Family

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Sharing is caring. And what could be a more caring act of charity than to share your precious points with someone else?

Unfortunately, in many cases, transferring points between loyalty accounts can turn into an expensive proposition. It’s often much more affordable to book flights for someone else from the original person’s account.

However, booking a hotel room for a traveler other than yourself isn’t as simple. Fortunately, many hotel programs allow free point transfers, and some even offer the option to pool points among multiple account holders.

Let’s take a look at the transfer rules, their costs and why anyone would want to transfer their hotel points to someone else in the first place.

Four Reasons To Combine Hotel Points Between Accounts

When it comes to earning points as a couple or family, using two-player mode can be a significant boost. Two-player mode means that both you and your significant other, parent or whoever you tend to vacation with, both apply for the same credit cards and earn their welcome offers. That means you’ll have double the number of points to redeem, no matter the situation.

While this strategy is excellent for couples, it becomes essential for families who often need to fund award tickets and stays for four or more people. And as kids aren’t always able to earn points and miles, the responsibility lies with the adults to earn enough points to go around.

Let’s look at four of the top reasons you’d want to combine your hotel points between accounts.

Book a Longer Stay

The most obvious reason you might want to combine hotel points with someone else is to book a longer stay. The more points you have, the longer you can afford to stay.

For example, to stay at an award category 7 Hyatt hotel in off-peak seasons, it’ll cost you 25,000 points per night. If you have 50,000 points in your account and your spouse has 50,000 points, combining your points would enable you to stay for four nights, instead of just two.

Take Advantage of the Fourth or Fifth Night Free

Certain hotel chains, such as IHG, Hilton and Marriott, offer a free fourth or fifth night on award bookings.

When staying at Marriott properties, you’ll receive the fifth night free on consecutive award stays of five or more nights. Keep in mind that the free night discount will be applied to the night with the lowest point redemption value, rather than the actual fifth night.

If you have Hilton Honors elite status, you’ll also receive the fifth night free on consecutive award stays of five or more nights. Earning Hilton Honors elite status is as easy as holding the $0 annual fee Hilton Honors American Express Card (see rates and fees), so there’s no reason not to take advantage of this savings opportunity.

And, if you hold any of IHG’s rewards credit cards, you’ll enjoy the fourth night for free on consecutive award stays, with no cap on the number of nights you can stay.

To get a free fourth or fifth night, your stay will need to be booked with points—not cash or free-night awards. In this case, the incentive to transfer points to someone else is to take advantage of one of these free-night promotions.

Let’s use Marriott as an example. Say you have 120,000 points sitting in your Marriott Bonvoy account, and your spouse, sibling or parent has 30,000 points. If a night at your prospective Marriott property costs 30,000 points, the other person could transfer their 30,000 points to you, giving you a total of 150,000 points to play with. That way, you could redeem your 150,000 Marriott points for five nights, giving you the fifth night for free.

Enjoy Elite-Status Benefits

Another reason to transfer your hotel points to someone else is to take advantage of their elite-status benefits, such as upgrades, late check-out or free breakfast. It’d be no fun watching your significant other enjoy a free breakfast or a $100 property credit while you miss out on all the elite-status-only action.

Let’s say you’re a Hilton Honors Gold Elite member and your spouse is Diamond, thanks to holding the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card. In this case, you’ll want to book your stay using your spouse’s Hilton Honors account and take advantage of all the good stuff that the Diamond status gets you, including Executive Lounge access, increased bonus points earning rates on top of your base earnings and premium Wi-Fi.

By transferring your points to your spouse’s account when booking, you’ll be able to reap the benefits of Diamond status without having it yourself.

Use Up the Remaining Points

If you’ve got an insignificant number of points left and you don’t have any upcoming stays with a particular program, you might be inclined to transfer them to someone who’d use them. Without qualifying account activity, hotel points can expire after anywhere between 12 and 24 months, depending on the rewards program.

So instead of letting your points expire, transferring them to someone who can use them is a great way to earn some major karma points with the points and miles gods.

How To Combine Hotel Points With the Major Hotel Programs

Best Western Rewards

You and another Best Western Rewards member can combine points as long you both share the same physical address. To start a points transfer, you’ll need to contact the Best Western customer service team at 1-800-237-8483.

You can transfer up to 50,000 Best Western Rewards points per phone call and request a maximum of three transfers per month. All transfers of 50,001 or more points require a point transfer form plus a copy of a transferring member’s driver’s license. There’s no minimum transfer requirement and transfers are free.

Choice Privileges

Unfortunately, point transfers to other members are not available through the Choice Privileges program.

Hilton Honors

Of all the hotel loyalty programs, Hilton Honors makes it the easiest to combine points, and it’s free to do so. In fact, the program offers a point pooling option.

You can pool rewards into one account with up to another 10 Hilton Honors members (for a total of 11 people), and they don’t have to be your household members. Any person who has been a Hilton Honors member for at least 30 days, has at least 1,000 points and at least one item of account activity can join a pool. Each member also needs to be of age of majority, meaning 18 years old in most states and 19 or 21 years old in a handful of states.

You’ll need to decide who’s going to be your point pooling leader, as their account will be used for both pooling and booking. Therefore, choose the person with the highest Hilton Honors elite status level, so that everyone benefits when booking.

A member can transfer a minimum of 1,000 Hilton Honors points and a maximum of 500,000 points into a pool each calendar year, over a maximum of six transactions. A member can receive up to two million points in a calendar year.

Hilton’s easy point pooling function makes scoring a free fifth night on award bookings even easier.

IHG Rewards Club

IHG One Rewards Diamond Elite members or those belonging to IHG’s Business Rewards program can transfer up to 500,000 points to other IHG members per calendar year with zero fees.

Both you and the recipient’s accounts must be a minimum of 30 days old, and you can transfer points to another member in increments of 1,000 points.

To receive IHG One Rewards Diamond Elite status, you need to earn a minimum of 70 qualifying nights or 120,000 qualifying points in a calendar year. Alternatively, if you hold the IHG One Rewards Premier Credit Card or the IHG One Rewards Premier Business Credit Card, you can receive Diamond Elite status through Dec. 31 of the following year when you make purchases totaling $40,000 or more in a calendar year.

You can also benefit from fee-free point transfers between IHG members if you’re part of the IHG Business Rewards program. This program is aimed at “individuals that book on behalf of others,” to specifically include “corporate bookers, business travel/meetings agents or individual bookers.” IHG’s terms and conditions define an individual booker as:

“An individual […] who books Qualifying Spend at Participating Hotels on their own behalf or on behalf of someone else.”

This fairly wide definition gives you the opportunity to enroll in the Business Rewards program and benefit from fee-free points transfers, among other perks.

If you don’t fall into any of the above categories, you can still transfer points to other IHG members in increments of 1,000 points. There’s no limit to how many points a person can transfer or receive.

However, you’ll be subject to a fee of $5 for every 1,000 points that you transfer, which is almost never worth paying. For instance, transferring 50,000 points would cost you $250 in fees, meaning you’d often be better off just booking with cash.

So you’re best off trying to qualify for an IHG credit card or enrolling in the IHG Business Rewards program.

Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott Bonvoy members can transfer points to any program member as long as both accounts have been opened for at least 30 days with qualifying activity. A new member is able to receive points after 90 days of enrolling in the Bonvoy program regardless of activity. In either case, point transfers are free of fees.

You can either contact Marriott at 801-468-4000 to initiate a transfer or do it online through your account. You can transfer at least 1,000 Marriott points but no more than 100,000 points per calendar year. A single member can receive no more than 500,000 points per calendar year. Points must be transferred in increments of 1,000 and transfers are free. Transfers are also capped to a maximum of two per month and six per year, for both giving and receiving.

Radisson Rewards

Radisson Rewards members with elite status can share Radisson points with any other Radisson Rewards program member.

Radisson members with no status can transfer their points to another member of their household only. Both people must have been Radisson Rewards members for at least one year and have resided at the same address for at least 30 days.

You can transfer as little as one point, there are no limits on points transfers and transfers are free. To combine points, call 1-888-288-8889.

World of Hyatt

A World of Hyatt member can combine hotel points with any program member (for free) by filling out a Point Combining Request form and sending it to worldofhyatt@hyatt.com. Both the sender and receiver need to fill out this form.

Members may transfer or receive points once per 30 days, and there’s no annual limit on the number of points that can be transferred.

The transfer terms state that the points must be used to book a specific award, but no one actually verifies this information. You probably wouldn’t be transferring points unless you had a specific redemption in mind anyway.

World of Hyatt point transfers come in especially handy to book a Guest of Honor stay, which means you can enjoy all the perks of a Globalist member if they also book a stay for you using points.

Wyndham Rewards

Unfortunately, just like with Choice points, it’s not possible to transfer points earned in the Wyndham Rewards program to another member.

Final Thoughts

While having your points expire hurts, having points sitting in your account that you’re unable to combine for a redemption feels just as bad.

The ability to transfer points between accounts offers a lot of flexibility, particularly if you’re a couple or family pooling points for a dream trip. In two-player mode, you and your significant other can both apply for a co-branded hotel credit card, earn the cards’ respective welcome offers and combine your points for a longer stay. And if these cards confer complimentary elite status, your stay will be all the more luxurious.

Check out the best hotel credit cards for free night awards, as well as those with lucrative welcome offers, to make your next award trip come true.