20% bonus when you transfer UAE Citibank PremierMiles to Etihad Airways

Citibank UAE's Premier Miles card is currently offering a 20% bonus on all transfers to Etihad Airways Guest Miles Program. Is this a good offer? Let's find out.

Citibank's PremierMiles card is one product that is available in many countries, with locally variant terms, earnings, etc. I don't know of many banks that have such a common product available in multiple countries. I happen to be a customer of their UAE product.

The list of airlines and hotels you can transfer your points to, differs from country to country. But by and large they are the same for India and UAE (except of course, that in India, Citibank and Jet Airways don't really see eye-to-eye much).

Anyway, Citibank is currently offering a bonus of 20% on all miles transferred to Etihad Airways between 1 and 31 October 2016.

This the same as the promotion that Etihad is currently running, with multiple transfer partners.

It's weird that Citi has sent me this offer, when more than half the time period is already over for the offer. Nonetheless, there's still time to transfer points to Etihad under this offer.

Citi Premier Miles card in UAE has a 1:1 ratio for its 16 partners, including Jet Airways, Etihad, British Airways, Singapore Airlines. Bonus for transferring miles is something that comes up infrequently, with no certainty as to which partners it applies to. In the last one year, there was a 25% bonus for transfer to Etihad Miles earlier this year in July and the more generous 50% bonus for transfer to Avios in August and September. Avios being one of my favourite programs, I really regret not having transferred miles to Avios during the promotion period.

I have been meaning to close my PremierMiles card for a while now and was waiting for an offer like this. So needless to say, my points will be travelling from my PM account to my Etihad Account.

But should you be transferring your points under this offer? The more standard answer is "No". For two reasons:

• Unless you have an immediate requirement, points are much more valuable when retained in a flexible program like PremierMiles. Speculative transfers to any airline can backfire, and you run the risk of devaluation (of course, that last point applies to any program).
• Based on the offers that came along earlier this year, this is obviously not the best one. If I wasn't planning to close my account, I would hold on for a better offer.

Etihad does have a good frequent flyer program. Given their multiple charts for partner redemption, it can get a little confusing sometimes, but overall I think they have the best programs in the Middle East (we are working on a detailed post for Etihad Miles Redemption). 

I have been eyeing to travel to Maldives or Seychelles next year and Etihad has a direct flight there. That apart, I often travel from AUH to CCU, so I am hopeful I will be able to make good use of my miles. 

And Etihad has great service onboard. My wife and I recently flew their flagship A380 to LHR on Etihad Business Studio and it was amazing (Here's a detailed review of their A380 Business product from Asan's flight a few weeks ago).

My toddler though enjoyed it a lot more than we did! We flew back on the A380 from LHR to AUH in economy, and the service was just impeccable this time too.

So for now, I will park my miles in the Etihad Guest program, using the 20% bonus promotion and hopefully book myself to a holiday soon.

Readers: What do you propose to do? Is this offer enough to tempt you to make the transfer?