How to convert Virgin Points to Hilton or IHG hotel points (Virgin Redemption University #7)

How can you convert Virgin Points into Hilton Honors or IHG One Rewards hotel points?

This article is Part 7 of our new ‘Virgin Redemption University’ series to run alongside our existing ‘Avios Redemption University’ – which itself will get a much-needed update next month.

If you want to earn more Virgin Points, our review of the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard credit card is here (15,000 bonus points) and our review of the free Virgin Atlantic Reward Mastercard credit card is here.

Here are the other 12 articles in the series:

• How does Virgin Red differ from Virgin Flying Club?
• How many Virgin Points do you need to fly to ….?
• How to redeem Virgin Points on Virgin Atlantic flights
• How to redeem Virgin Points on SkyTeam flights
• How to redeem Virgin Points on ANA and other partners
• How to upgrade your Virgin Atlantic flight with Virgin Points
• How to use Virgin Points for a Virgin Holidays discount
• How to redeem Virgin Points for hotel rooms via Kaligo
• Is Virgin Atlantic’s ‘Points Plus Money’ feature a good deal?
• What’s the best non-flying use of Virgin Points?
• What is the cheapest way to top up your Virgin Points?
• Get cheaper Virgin redemptions with a credit card voucher

Few airlines let you convert frequent flyer miles into hotel points

Virgin Atlantic has a rare feature that allows you to transfer your Virgin Points into two hotel loyalty schemes.

It is VERY rare for an airline to allow you to transfer to a hotel scheme. Finnair still lets you transfer to IHG One Rewards but at a very poor 2:1 rate, and they also have a tie-up with Accor.

Accor has done deals with a lot of airlines, and Eurostar, over the last couple of years – and with Qatar Airways adopting Avios there is now a route to go Avios to Accor.  Accor is very much the exception to the rule however, and as a revenue-based scheme (1 Accor point = 2 Eurocents of hotel room) it rarely makes sense to convert.

Whilst the transfer rates are not great, you should be grateful that Virgin Flying Club allows you to do any sort of transfer out since it is real ‘cash out of the door’ for the airline.  It is a valuable option for people who earn a lot of Virgin Points through their work but do not want to redeem them for further flights, possible due to family or availability issues.

Transferring to hotel schemes is also a good exit for anyone who picks up some Virgin Points but feels that they will never earn enough for a long-haul redemption in a premium cabin.

When Virgin Atlantic was in financial difficulties in 2020, many HfP readers decided to hedge their risk by transferring their Virgin Points into Hilton or IHG points. They lost some value but it removed the risk of losing everything.

Transferring Virgin Points to Hilton Honors

Here is the Hilton page on the Virgin site. Our full review of Hilton Honors is here.

You must call to make a transfer. It cannot be done online.

You will see that the transfer rate to Hilton Honors is 2:3.  The minimum transfer is 10,000 Virgin Points and then in increments of 10,000 points.

We value Hilton points at 0.33p.  Click the link for our justification.

It is worth noting that Hilton will regularly sell points for 0.5 cents (0.40p) each by offering a 100% bonus. You can buy them with a 100% bonus via this link until 19th September.  This puts a cap on what you can value them at – if you can buy points for cash for 0.4p for much of the year, you shouldn’t value them more highly.

(The only exception would be if you needed more points than you can purchase in one year. However the current offer lets you buy a chunky 320,000 points. Your partner could buy a further 320,000 and use Hilton’s ‘points pooling’ feature to transfer them to you for free, so this will rarely be an issue.)

Based on our 0.33p valuation, you get 0.5p of value per Virgin Point when converting to Hilton Honors.  This is not great but it could be worse. Even at the highest valuation you can place on a Hilton point – 0.4p, the price you can buy them for – you are only getting 0.6p of value per Virgin Point.

0.5p is the same as you get for 95% of the redemptions available on the Virgin Red app. Even if you use Virgin Points to part-pay for a cash flight or a Virgin Holiday, you only receive 0.55p per point.

Transfers can take 2-4 weeks to go through so this is NOT a good idea if you need Hilton points quickly to lock in a redemption room you spotted.

Points transfers do not count towards Hilton Honors status.

Transferring Virgin Points to IHG One Rewards

You can learn more about IHG One Rewards in our overview article here.

You must call to make a transfer. It cannot be done online.

Converting to IHG One Rewards is poorer than converting to Hilton Honors, based on our valuations.  This would let you redeem at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Hotel Indigo, Crowne Plaza, Kimpton, InterContinental etc hotels.

We value IHG points at 0.4p. Click the link to see our justification.

The transfer ratio from Virgin Points is 1:1. The minimum transfer is 10,000 Virgin Points and then in increments of 5,000 points.

0.4p per Virgin Point (based on the 1:1 transfer rate) is an even worse return than transferring to Hilton Honors.

IHG points can be bought direct for 0.5 cents (0.40p) when they are sold with a 100% bonus – which is quite often at the moment. The IHG ‘buy points’ page is here. This makes it very hard to justify a higher valuation.

As with Hilton transfers, it can take a couple of weeks for your points to arrvive.  This isn’t a solution if you need to book a room quickly.

Points transfers do not count towards IHG One Rewards status.

Using Virgin Points via Kaligo.com

There is another way of using your Virgin Atlantic miles for hotel booking.  Virgin Atlantic partners with hotel booking site Kaligo.com to let you redeem Virgin Points for 465,000 hotels in their portfolio.

We will look at this more closely in a future article in this series.

In general, based on tests we have run this week, Kaligo.com will get you around 0.4p per point of value.

This is poor. Even worse, bookings made via Kaligo.com are treated as ‘third party’ so you won’t receive any status benefits or hotel points from the chain you use.

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How to earn Virgin Points from UK credit cards (January 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Virgin Points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

You can choose from two official Virgin Atlantic credit cards (apply here, the Reward+ card has a bonus of 15,000 Virgin Points):

You can also earn Virgin Points from various American Express cards – and these have sign-up bonuses too.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold is FREE for a year and comes with 20,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 20,000 Virgin Points.

The Platinum Card from American Express comes with 40,000 Membership Rewards points, which convert into 40,000 Virgin Points.

Small business owners should consider the two American Express Business cards. Points convert at 1:1 into Virgin Points.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Virgin Points. 

(Want to earn more Virgin Points?  Click here to see our recent articles on Virgin Atlantic and Flying Club and click here for our home page with the latest news on earning and spending other airline and hotel points.)