Bilt Rewards is expanding its reach with the addition of Etihad Guest as a transfer partner.
Starting Oct. 7, 2025, Bilt Rewards members can transfer their Bilt Points to Etihad Guest at a 1:1 ratio, matching what American Express, Capital One and Citi currently offer for their premium travel credit cards.
Etihad Guest — the loyalty program for Abu Dhabi-based Etihad Airways — is far from Bilt’s best transfer partner, but it’s always a good thing when a flexible points currency offers more options. That’s especially true if you already earn Bilt points on your rent payments or other purchases. (The Bilt World Elite Mastercard® Credit Card allows you to earn up to 100,000 points on rent payments each calendar year with no transaction fees when you use your card five times per statement period on rent and qualifying net purchases.)
Here’s what you should know about Bilt’s latest partnership with Etihad Guest.
Ways to use Etihad Guest miles
Etihad Guest miles can be redeemed for flights and upgrades on Etihad Airways — including its fancy business and first class seats — or flights on the airline’s many partners around the world.
Flights on Etihad
You can book an award ticket in Etihad first class from New York to Abu Dhabi for 160,000 Etihad Guest miles and around $545 in taxes and fees. A business class ticket can cost 120,000 miles with the same amount in taxes and fees. But keep in mind that Etihad uses dynamic award pricing, so don’t be surprised if you find first class flights that cost as much as 2 million points each way.
You can also use miles to upgrade to Etihad’s luxurious business and first class products. First class passengers, for example, have access to a private chauffeur in Abu Dhabi and, depending on the ticket, select global airports.
Plus, if you book an Etihad first class ticket from the airline directly, you’ll be eligible for a paid upgrade using cash or miles to The Residence, a three-room suite on select routes operated by the Airbus A380.
Flights on partner airlines
However, even if you have no plans to visit Abu Dhabi or fly with the airline, you can still use those miles to book flights with a wide variety of carriers. Although it’s not part of an alliance, the airline still has a strong network of partnerships.
Those airlines include Air New Zealand, Air Canada, Air France, All Nippon Airways, American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, KLM, Oman Air, Scandinavian Airlines, TAP Air Portugal and Vietnam Airlines.
Unlike its own dynamic pricing system, Etihad Guest uses a distance-based chart for partner awards, so you can expect to pay 80,000 points for a partner business class flight between 3,001 and 4,000 miles, such as from New York to Paris. However, if you wanted to go from San Francisco to Tokyo, you’d have to pay 120,000 miles for the 5,001-to-6,000 miles distance band for business class.
Should you transfer Bilt points to Etihad Guest?
It’s always exciting when a program adds a new transfer partner, but you’ll want to make sure you’re getting the best value out of your points before transferring.
That’s especially true for Bilt, given how many excellent transfer partners the program has. For example, Bilt transfers to Atmos Rewards, the joint loyalty program for Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. That program offers sweet spots like flights from New York to Frankfurt on Condor, a German airline, for 55,000 Atmos points. Contrast that with the New York to Paris example, which would cost 80,000 Etihad Guest miles.
Another one of Bilt’s newer transfer partners, Japan Airlines Mileage Bank, offers 55,000-mile award redemptions for business class between Tokyo and any U.S. destination served by the Japanese carrier.
You could also transfer your Bilt points to World of Hyatt to book luxury hotel stays for reasonable redemption rates under the program’s award chart.
If you decide to transfer points to Etihad, make sure you have a plan for redeeming them. For most Etihad Guest members, miles expire after 18 months of flight inactivity, and you’ll need to fly on Etihad or one of its partners and credit the flight to Etihad Guest to reset the clock. Miles don’t expire for Etihad Guest’s Platinum and Emerald elites.
Ultimately, whether you should transfer Bilt points to Etihad Guest depends on where you want to go and what you want to do with your points. But given that Etihad Guest has existing partnerships with multiple banks, you’re likely better off transferring points from those programs and saving your Bilt points for the program’s higher-value transfer partners.
Top photo by Benjamin Din/NerdWallet.
