Membership Rewards Guide: 4:1 Transfer to Leading Hotels, Stay at Luxury Hotels

AMEX can now transfer to Leading Hotels, at a 4:1 ratio. Leading Hotels of the World is a collection of more than 400 independent luxury hotels across 80 countries. Leaders Club does not have a fixed award chart; the points required are usually tied to the hotel’s cash price, so point value is relatively stable. Most redemptions can get around 7–8 cents per point, and the official site shows free nights starting at about 4,000 points. That works out to an MR transfer value of close to 2 cents per point. One thing to note: taxes and fees cannot be covered with points here, so those must be paid in cash.

• Official introduction

Some redemption examples

• The Ritz London: cash price $2,361.63, points price 25,768 points, or about 9.2 cents per point.
• The Fifth Avenue Hotel New York: cash price $1,415.21, points price 16,188 points, or about 8.7 cents per point.
• The Legian Seminyak Bali: cash price $631.78, points price 6,732 points, or about 9.4 cents per point.
• Chablé Maroma Cancun: cash price $869.84, points price 13,425 points, or about 6.5 cents per point.
• The Manor House at Fancourt: cash price $578.35, points price 7,273 points, or about 8.0 cents per point.
• The Brazilian Court Hotel: two-night cash price $3,161.74, actual redemption 34,976 points, or about 9.0 cents per point. This booking ultimately did not have any additional taxes charged.
• Constance Lémuria Seychelles: cash price about $1,200 per night, points price about 17,000 points, or about 7.1 cents per point.

About Membership Rewards

Membership Rewards (MR) is the points system launched by American Express (AMEX). You can earn points through sign-up bonuses, card spending, and more. Points can be transferred to airline miles and hotel points, or redeemed for gift cards, travel statement credits, and more. Used well, every 10,000 points can be worth $200+ in value. That said, we generally estimate the average value at 1.5 cents per point, meaning 100 MR points are worth $1.50.

Where MR points come from

Sign-up bonuses and card spending

The biggest source of MR points is AMEX Platinum and Gold, which often come with very generous sign-up bonuses.

There are also a few personal cards that can earn points.

• AMEX Everyday (no longer available; 2.4x on groceries, 1.2x on everything else)
• AMEX Everyday Preferred (no longer available; 4.5x on groceries, 3x on gas, 1.5x on everything else)
• AMEX Green

In addition to the personal cards above, AMEX also has many business credit cards, with Business Gold and Business Platinum being the main ones.

AMEX Checking and Business Checking can also earn MR.

• AMEX Checking account overview
• AMEX Business Checking account overview

AMEX offers

Recently, the cards above have had an offer for spending $400 at Saks and getting 6,000 MR back. There are also many other AMEX offers that can earn extra MR rewards.

Upgrade and authorized user bonuses

AMEX is very good at encouraging people to upgrade. It often sends targeted offers that let you upgrade a card and get extra MR rewards. Note that these bonuses, like sign-up bonuses, usually require you to keep the upgraded card for at least one year, or the bonus will be clawed back.

There can also be bonuses for adding authorized users, on both personal and business cards.

Rakuten transfers

AMEX has partnered with Rakuten, and the cash back earned through Rakuten can be converted to MR points at a 1:1 ratio. If you do a lot of online shopping, this can also be a major source of MR.

If you want to sign up for a Membership Rewards (MR) account to earn MR, you first need to have a qualifying AMEX credit card. You can start by clicking the cash-back version of the referral link, then switch in your browser to the MR-earning version.

• First click: Rakuten referral link to complete registration (only the cash-back version has a sign-up bonus)
• Then click: https://www.rakuten.com/american-express to switch to the MR version

Other

• Pay Over Time: AMEX sometimes also sends out this offer, where enrolling gives you points directly. AMEX Pay Over Time promotion overview

Using points

Transfer to airline miles and hotel points

AMEX airline and hotel partners are listed below. Airline partners are generally more useful; hotel transfers are usually not the best use unless you just need to top off an account. The more important airline partners include:

• 1:1 Delta, British Airways (BA), ANA, Air Canada (AC), Air France (AF), Avianca (AV)
• 5:4 Cathay Pacific (CX)

For details, see:

• Air Canada Aeroplan miles guide
• Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer miles program introduction [Fully updated for 2024]
• ANA miles introduction [Fully updated for 2025]
• Avianca LifeMiles (AV) miles guide
• British Airways Avios miles guide [Fully updated for 2025]
• Delta SkyMiles miles and membership introduction [Fully updated for 2024]
• Air France/KLM Flying Blue miles program introduction [Fully updated for 2025]
• Virgin Atlantic (VS) membership program and miles introduction [Fully updated for 2025]

Note that if you transfer MR to a U.S. airline like Delta, you do have to pay a certain percentage in taxes and fees. Non-U.S. airlines do not require this.

Features of some transfer partners

This section only covers some beginner-level redemptions. For more advanced and interesting routing, please refer to the individual mileage guides on this site.

British Airways (BA)

• Short-haul flights within the U.S., short-haul flights between the U.S. and Canada
• China-Japan routes, domestic Japan routes, and China-U.S. routes are suitable for flights between specific cities,
• Be sure to check whether there are high fuel surcharges. When searching, simply choose the award ticket search on BA’s official site.

British Airways Avios Miles Guide [Fully Updated for 2025]

ANA

• U.S.-China round-trip economy class (around 60,000 points) and business class (around 110,000 points); round trips can include a free stopover
• One-way award tickets are available
• Note that ANA points expire after two years and will not be extended by account activity, so transfer only when you need them.
• ANA All Nippon Airways Miles Guide (Fully Updated for 2025)

Air Canada (AC) features

• Long-haul domestic U.S. flights and itineraries between smaller cities that require a connection
• For U.S. domestic award tickets booked within 21 days, the $75 close-in booking fee can be waived
• Air Canada Aeroplan Miles Guide

LifeMiles

• No fuel surcharges, one-way redemptions are allowed, and you can search for award seats directly online. No close-in booking fee
• Redemption rates include 75,000 points for a one-way U.S.-China business class award, 90,000 points for a one-way U.S.-China first class award on ANA and Asiana, and a 7,500-mile tier for domestic U.S. flights
• That said, AV still has plenty of drawbacks. For example, some award seats do not show up when searching (even if UA can find them), there is a $25 online booking fee, and calling in may mean dealing with agents whose English is not very standard.
• Avianca LifeMiles (AV) Guide

Qantas Airways (QF)

Membership Rewards can now be transferred 1:1 to Qantas Airways (QF) miles. Qantas miles are also distance-based and can be used to redeem Qantas flights, oneworld partners such as AA, and some non-alliance flights such as AS. When booking, just issue the ticket directly on the Qantas website. QF miles are pretty good for nonstop domestic U.S. flights (similar to BA), and they are also good for flights from the U.S. East Coast to Western Europe. In addition, MR transfers to QF are instant, so this is a pretty solid transfer partner.

Other redemptions

• AMEX Travel payments can be redeemed 1:1, which can be used to cash out
• With AMEX Platinum Schwab, you can cash out at 1.1 cents per point
• With AMEX Business Platinum, you can redeem selected airline premium-cabin tickets at 1.54 cents per point
• Redeem for gift cards, shop in the online store, pay your bill directly, or even pay at McDonald's. The redemption rates are terrible, so I usually don't use them

MR point characteristics

• Account structure: For personal cards (primary card), all MR points are kept in a single account and can be used directly (the MR account for authorized users follows the primary card)
• Expiration: As long as you have at least one card that earns MR points, none of your MR points will expire. Before closing all cards, transfer them to the airline miles you need.
• Earning characteristics:
  • If you already have an MR account (that is, you already have one of the cards above), then when you open another card, the new card's signup bonus will appear in your MR account as soon as you meet the spending requirement. If you did not have an MR account before (your first MR-earning card), the points will show up in your MR account in about 2 months.
  • Points earned from everyday spending on a statement will appear in your MR account a few days after the next statement closing date, and the bill must be paid in full before the points post to your account.
• Transfer characteristics
  • To transfer points, you need to link your airline or hotel loyalty number to your MR account. Usually, once it's linked, you're good to go
  • Transfers to U.S. airlines incur a small fee ($6 for 10,000 points transferred), while transfers to airlines in other countries have no fee
  • Most airline transfers are instant, but transfers to Asian programs (ANA, CX) may take 1-3 days
  • Transfers are irreversible, and the minimum transfer amount is generally 1,000 points
  • The name and address on the airline or hotel loyalty account you are transferring to must exactly match your MR account

• Authorized user transfers require a 90-day wait: After adding an authorized user, you must wait 90 days before you can link that user's airline/hotel loyalty number to MR (previously it only took 1-2 days). In other words, if you want to transfer points to someone else's frequent flyer account, you need to add that person as an authorized user and then wait 90 days before transferring. This may restrict the old practice of adding authorized users to sell points.

How to transfer points:

• First, you need a loyalty account with the airline or hotel you want. If you don't have one, go to the official website and register first.
• Link your MR account and the loyalty account you want to transfer points to
  • Log in to your AMEX account and click Membership Rewards in the upper-right corner to enter the page. Or log in directly through the MR website
  • Click your name, usually in the upper-right area (to the left of the points you already have), and choose points summary
  • In the lower-right area of the page, choose Link Loyalty Programs--Link additional programs
  • Fill in all required information as instructed
• Log in again and enter your MR account page
• Select Travel, then Transfer Points, and choose the transfer destination you need
• Enter the amount you want to transfer and follow the steps to finish
• Don't forget to check your corresponding airline or hotel loyalty account afterward to make sure the points arrived

MR value

The value of MR is determined by the value of the airline miles you can transfer to. When MR is redeemed for airline miles and used for business class, it can deliver at least $0.02 of value per point. That means spending $1 on a credit card earns 1 MR point worth about $0.02, or 2% cash back. That's why we think cards that earn MR are better than cards that only give 1% cash back. Of course, because MR can be transferred to multiple airline programs and most of those transfers are instant, it gives us a lot of flexibility when booking award tickets. You can search for a seat, confirm everything looks good, and then transfer points and book immediately, all in one go. Therefore, the value of MR should be slightly higher than the value of all the partner miles it can transfer to. In addition, MR transfer partners include the three major airline alliances: Star Alliance members (ANA, AC), SkyTeam (Delta), and oneworld (BA), which effectively covers award tickets across all three alliances and is a major highlight. Still, considering that not everyone can redeem for business class, an average redemption value of 1.5 cents per point is more reasonable.

Of course, points value is not the same as cash value, and it depends entirely on your needs. If you do not need flights at all, then MR points are not for you, and there is no need to dive deeply into the MR ecosystem. At the same time, for every person who does need flights, the value of MR points is different. First, it depends on your route and your airline. For example, on the New York-Toronto route, BA can get you $0.06 of value, which is three times other redemptions, so MR is much more valuable to you and should be your first choice when deciding which card to apply for or which card to use. Second, value depends on your redemption skills; knowing how to search for seats and how to work with agents to book requires experience and accumulated knowledge.

In short, if you want to play the points game, do it seriously. Otherwise, cash back is better for you.

Conclusion

Because MR points can be transferred to airline miles, they are flexible to use but also require some skill. If you master them, the value of MR in your hands can be several times higher than for people who do not know how to use them, which is equivalent to your signup bonuses and card spending cash back being several times better than theirs.