Best route to Turkish Airlines Miles & Smiles points

[qwertymz]

I am in need of 15k Miles & Smiles points – currently my balance is sitting at 0. I have points in Amex Rewards and Virgin Red.

The most straightforward route I can find is to transfer 30k Amex points to Marriott Bonvoy (=45k), then transfer these to Turkish Airlines (=15k).

Otherwise, I can buy the points I need for $450.

Would you recommend buying, or transferring? Or is there another option I’m not seeing?

[SamG]

I don’t know of any other way . If there is likely it would massively devalue them anyway!

[qwertymz]

Thanks @SamG. What are your thoughts about buying vs converting? I’m getting 1.1p per point if we take the $450 value, which I guess is good?

[memesweeper]

qwertymz wrote:

Thanks @SamG. What are your thoughts about buying vs converting? I’m getting 1.1p per point if we take the $450 value, which I guess is good?

I’m not SamG but I’d value both 30k Amex and 45k Marriott as less than USD450.

[SamG]

1.1p is very good for Marriott – Rob values them at 0.5p and half the time when I check I can’t even get that !

Curious what you’re booking via M&S to be getting such good value. It has some amazing sweet spots & it’s a shame it’s hard for us to earn the points in the UK

[qwertymz]

@SamG a business class upgrade on a UK – IST route. My valuation might be off – but paying for 15k miles is $450, and the fare difference is (currently) just over £500, so that’s how I’m valuing the miles per spend.

[Guernsey Globetrotter]

On those rates I calculate you’re getting 1.19p per Amex MR point at the $450 valuation (USD-GBP rate of 1.265) or 1.67p at the £500 cash fare difference. Both look like reasonable use of the Amex MRs if you’d otherwise happily spend the £500+ to upgrade and/or have no other use for the points.