Departure Experience HKG-BKK With Emirates & Marriott’s Your World Rewards Partnership

Today, I’d like to review my experience with Emirates and Your World Rewards, which is based on the carrier’s partnership with Marriott Bonvoy.

I was able to put it to the test again after booking a last-minute award ticket from Hong Kong to Bangkok in Economy Class 7500 Emirates Skywards miles, which is a very good rate for this route.

You can access Marriott’s and Emirates’ pages for the partnership here.

Marriott Bonvoy Platinum and higher members receive certain airport benefits, while Emirates Skywards Gold and Platinum members have some benefits while staying at Marriott hotels as part of this scheme.

The Your World Rewards system requires members to link their Emirates Skywards & Marriott Bonvoy accounts ahead of the flight which means that the Skywards number has to be attached to this booking and not another program to collect the miles.

Members who successfully signed up should be entitled to Priority Check-in, Priority Boarding, and of course, earning 3 Marriott points per USD spent on the ticket.

After the successful registration and check-in, it should show the word PARTNER’ on the boarding pass obtained at the check-in counter (not the online boarding pass for whatever reason):

The handling agents who dealt with the Emirates flight didn’t know anything about the Your World Rewards partnership. The Emirates staff at the gate was informed and told me I could board through the Business Class line. I’m not sure why Emirates doesn’t just swap the word PARTNER with PRIORITY, so there is no question or ambiguity about what this actually means.

Truth be told, I wouldn’t have booked this without any status benefits, but being able to fly the A380 between Bangkok and Hong Kong (vv) is a big incentive ever since Thai Airways has shut all A380s down.

In addition to that the departure time of EK385 from Hong Kong to Bangkok is nicely timed at 21:10. The alternative Thai flight at 20:45h is no longer on the schedule so the Emirates flight is really the next best thing and I have the Amex Centurion Lounge as an option for the lounge.

This partnership first started under Starwood Preferred Guest, which had partnerships in place with Delta, China Eastern, and Emirates, while Marriott partnered only with United. Following the SPG/Marriott merger, the United partnership remained, but Marriott later rekindled the Your World Rewards with Emirates as well.

You can find a range of FAQ’s about the partnership here.

Marriott Bonvoy & Emirates Your World Rewards 2020

What is your experience with the Emirates & Marriott Bonvoy Your World Rewards partnership five years after it first went live?

Conclusion

I booked a flight in Emirates Economy which was available for a very low amount of miles and utilized the Emirates / Bonvoy Your World Rewards partnership.

While Emirates staff in Emirates uniform seemed to know about this cooperation, ground staff supplied by a handling agent has still not been adequately trained on how the program actually works and what benefits passengers are entitled to. Maybe Emirates should simply replace the term “partner” with “Priority” so that there isn’t any ambiguity!?

My online boarding pass didn’t show anything about Your World Rewards at all, but the check-in printed boarding pass does show ‘PARTNER’, though the agent didn’t have the slightest clue what that meant. I then utilized the Amex Centurion Lounge, and the gate staff let me board the flight through the business class lane after inquiring with the staff how this works.

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