Convert partner points to Etihad Guest Miles with 25% bonus

Etihad Guest, Etihad Airways' frequent flier program, is currently offering a promotion to convert points / loyalty rewards from other programs to the Etihad Guest program, at a bonus of 25%. This is valid for conversion transfers done till 31 December 2015.

You can convert credit card, hotel or other loyalty rewards of Etihad's conversion partners, at a 25% bonus. The actual conversion is done by contacting the program from which you intend to transfer points. Some partners offer an online conversion option. For further information on each partner, you can view all dedicated partner pages by category by clicking on the bank, hotel, and leisure/lifestyle pages.

India perspective

Many of Etihad's conversion partners are middle-east or UK based, so there aren't too many programs from a typical Indian user's point of view, from which you could transfer points. However, there are some options, though how useful they are will depend on how you value those points. You can:

• transfer Citibank Premier Miles to EY Guest a a normal rate of 2:1. So under this promotion, you'll get 1.25 EY Guest points for every 2 Citi PMs. Citi PMs are generally valued at their published redemption value of Rs 0.45 per PM, which means that you're effectively "buying" these EY miles at about Rs 0.72 per mile. Not optimal, but not too bad either.
• transfer SPG Starpoints to EY Guest at a normal rate of 1:1. Under this promotion, you should receive 1.25 EY Guest miles for every Starpoint transferred. SPG will also offer a 5,000 miles bonus for every 20,000 Starpoints transferred. I'm not sure if that extra 5k miles will be applied before or after the 25% bonus that EY is offering, but this ensures that you get at least 1.5 EY Guest miles per 1 Starpoint, as long as you transfer in multiples of 20k Starpoints. Having said that, I value my Starpoints quite high in India, which isn't the value I'd get by converting them to EY Guest miles. Note: The hotel transfers page for this 25% promotion states a conversion rate of 20k Starpoints for 5k EY Guest miles, which I think is erroneous.
• transfer 10,000 HHonors points into 1,000 EY Guest miles, plus the 25% bonus. As in the case of SPG, I find this to be a terrible value to give up HHonors points at.
  transfer 10,000 IHG Rewards Club points for 2,000 EY Guest miles, plus the 25% bonus. Given how easy it was (at least in the past) to earn IHG points, this might be useful to try out. Having said that, IHG Pointbreaks!
• transfer Marriott points between a ratio of 10,000:1,500 and 140,000:35,000 to EY Guest, plus a 25% bonus. The best option here is to transfer 140k MR points, but again, I would value that many MR points far higher than I'd value 35k EY Guest Miles (even after the 25% bonus).

There are various other hotel points transfer options here. There are no unusual T&Cs in this offer, and the full T&Cs can be found on the landing page.

Conclusion

I'd have definitely used this offer vis-a-vis transferring Citi PMs to EY Guest, had they not devalued the Citi PM transfers earlier this year. In all, I don't see this as a very useful promotion, given the fact that you could likely use the hotel points / Citi PM miles to earn better value either on their own, or by transferring to other programs.

Do you think this bonus will get you thinking about transferring points to Etihad Guest?