Danell's Journey › Gifting travel
People keep offering me miles and points, and then we both get stuck, because every airline and hotel does this differently and half of them charge you for the privilege of being generous. So Austin went and figured it out. This is the whole thing in plain English — what costs nothing, what costs more than it is worth, and the one option almost nobody thinks of.
And if you are another patient or caregiver who wandered in here looking for help with travel yourself, scroll to the bottom. There is a whole list of people who will fly you and house you for free, and I wish somebody had handed it to me on day one.
If you only read one thing on this page, read the dark box.
Every major US airline — Delta, United, American, Southwest, Alaska/Atmos, JetBlue — lets you spend your own miles on a ticket for someone who is not you. No fee. No transfer cap. Nothing lost in the middle. Same for hotel rooms on all four big chains: book it, put my name on it as the guest, done.
It is the single most efficient way to do this, and it is the one most people don't realize is allowed.
Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt all let you move points to another member's account for free. If you have a hotel balance sitting there, this one is genuinely painless and it gives us flexibility on dates. Details below.
How hotel transfers work →A timeshare week you are not going to use. A rental with a gap between bookings. A condo, a cabin, a spare room near the water. Lodging is the expensive half of any trip, and this costs you nothing but a week on a calendar.
Offer a week or a stay →Airline and hotel gift cards are transferable and they cover the taxes and fees that award tickets don't. Plain cash covers gas, parking, bad hospital-cafeteria coffee and the dog sitter, which is usually the bigger number anyway.
Give via GoFundMe →If you own or manage a timeshare, a vacation rental, a beach condo, a cabin, or you just have a place near the water that sits empty part of the year — that is the most valuable thing on this entire page, and it costs you nothing out of pocket.
Tell us roughly what and when. Where it is, how many it sleeps, and which weeks are actually open. We are flexible — I am not picky about the month, and off-season is honestly easier for us anyway.
Timeshare owners: most systems let you deposit or gift a week, or add a guest certificate so someone else can check in under your reservation. Marriott Vacation Club, Hilton Grand Vacations, Wyndham, Bluegreen and the exchange networks (RCI, Interval International) all have some version of this. Your member services line will know the exact form in about four minutes.
Rental owners: a blocked week handed to us directly is simplest — no platform, no fees, no service charge. If you would rather run it through Airbnb or Vrbo for the insurance, that works too.
Near a transplant center? Different kind of gift, same idea. If you have a spare room or an in-law suite within driving distance of a major cancer center, there are families sleeping in hospital chairs right now who would take that in a heartbeat. Hospitality Homes and the Healthcare Hospitality Network both place hosts. Tell them, not us.
I know that sounds ungrateful. Stay with me — the math is genuinely bad, and it is bad for you, not for me.
Most airlines charge you real money to move miles into somebody else's account. Delta wants a penny a mile plus thirty dollars. Moving 30,000 SkyMiles — roughly one domestic round trip — costs you $330. Those same 30,000 miles are worth about $300 to $350 in actual airfare. You would be paying nearly the full value of the gift for permission to give it away.
If you spend your miles on a ticket with my name on it instead, that fee is zero and I get every mile's worth. Same generosity, none of the leakage.
| Program | Cost to transfer to me | Better option |
|---|---|---|
| Delta SkyMiles | $0.01/mile + $30 — ~$330 per round trip | Book the ticket, or SkyMiles gift card |
| American AAdvantage | $0.005/mile — ~$150 per round trip | Book the ticket |
| Alaska / Atmos Rewards | $10 per 1,000 + $25 (free if you hold their premium Visa) | Book the ticket |
| Southwest Rapid Rewards | Paid transfer, roughly $10 per 1,000 points | Book the ticket, or a Southwest gift card |
| United MileagePlus | Free via pooling — but pooled miles only fly United metal, and a pool is a standing arrangement | Book the ticket |
| JetBlue TrueBlue | Free via pooling, up to 7 members | Either works |
Rates as of August 2026 and they do change. Southwest does not publish its transfer price, so treat that row as a ballpark. Alaska Mileage Plan is now called Atmos Rewards after the Hawaiian merger, in case you go looking for the old name.
Email us and we'll send it straight over: our legal first and last names exactly as they appear on the IDs we travel with, our dates of birth, our home airport, and the window we're aiming for. Please add our frequent flyer numbers to the reservation so we still earn the credit. One thing to know going in — the booking lives in your account, so if anything has to change later, it has to change from your side.
Three of the four big chains move points between members for free. If you have a hotel balance, this is the easy yes.
| Program | Transfer to me | The fine print |
|---|---|---|
| Hilton Honors | Free — best option | Up to 500,000 out per year, 2 million in. Six transfers a year. Done online in a couple of minutes. No relationship requirement. |
| Marriott Bonvoy | Free | 100,000 out per year, 500,000 in. Two transfers a month, six a year. Online. |
| World of Hyatt | Free | Still a paper form emailed to Hyatt, and one transfer per 30 days, about 55,000 points max. Slower — but Hyatt points are worth the most per point of any of these. |
| IHG One Rewards | $5 per 1,000 | Free for Diamond Elite members, though IHG tightened that in late 2025. Worth checking your own account before you assume. |
Hilton runs a 100% bonus on purchased points fairly often, which lands the price around half a cent a point — right about what they're worth on redemption. Since Hilton transfers are free, someone who wanted to could buy during a promo and pass them straight along at no extra cost. We are not asking anyone to spend money on this. But people ask, so: that's the answer.
Donated miles are treated by the IRS as a gift from the airline to the recipient, not from you — even when the recipient is a registered charity. And a gift to a family is a personal gift, which is never deductible in any form. If the write-off matters to you, give to a 501(c)(3) instead. That is a real and good thing to do, it just isn't this.
People keep asking whether there's a site where a family posts a request and strangers send miles. There isn't. United's Miles on a Mission comes closest, but campaigns are limited to vetted nonprofits, not individuals. Miles4Migrants, which used to run something similar, shut down. So it really is email and a booking — sorry, that's just where the world is.
Sites that buy and sell miles violate every airline's terms of service, and the account that gets shut down and stripped is yours, not ours. Same goes for anything that looks like a trade — if you give miles and get something back, even a thank-you gift, that's technically bartering. Keep it one-way and you're fine.
Marriott, Hilton, IHG and Hyatt all wipe balances after roughly 24 months of no activity, and most airline programs do something similar. If you've been sitting on a balance you forgot about, it may be closer to the cliff than you think. Transferring or spending them resets the clock.
This part isn't about us. If you are a cancer or transplant patient staring down travel you cannot afford, these organizations exist and most people have never heard of a single one of them. Almost all of them are easier to reach through your treatment center's social worker than on your own — several of them require it. Ask for that person by name. They are the most underused resource in the entire hospital.
Free seats on empty corporate jets to treatment. They explicitly cover bone marrow and stem cell transplant patients and donors, and — this is the unusual part — there is no financial need requirement. You just have to be ambulatory and not need in-flight medical care. They have flown over 70,000 patients.
Request a flight →Free rooms for patients and a caregiver, at 30+ locations near major treatment centers. The American Cancer Society also partners with Extended Stay America for tens of thousands of free and discounted nights a year. Both go through ACS — call the 24-hour line at 1-800-227-2345.
Find lodging →A searchable directory of discounted lodging near cancer treatment centers nationwide. Type in your hospital and see what's negotiated nearby. Free to use, and it is the fastest way to find out what exists around a center you've never been to.
Search lodging →Volunteer pilots and donated commercial tickets for medical travel, all 50 states. Both have financial-need tests and need a couple of weeks' notice, so start earlier than feels necessary.
Air Charity Network →The registry that found my donor also has a financial assistance program covering travel, temporary housing, food and gas for the patient and a caregiver. Note that your transplant center's staff has to submit it — you can't apply directly, so bring it up at your next appointment.
See the program →Nearly every large cancer center quietly negotiates a "patient rate" with hotels nearby that is far below anything you'll find online, and they almost never advertise it. Ask the social worker or the front desk for the medical-rate list. This is the single highest-yield, least-known move on this page.
Two more worth knowing about: PAN Foundation offers a $500 transportation grant, though you need an active PAN grant already, and Blood Cancer United (formerly the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society) runs a travel assistance fund that opens and closes through the year — worth checking even if it's closed today, because it reopens.
Miles, points, a week at your place, a gift card, or nothing at all except sharing my video with someone who needs it — all of it counts, and I mean that. If you've got something in mind and you're not sure how it fits, just email us and we'll figure it out together.