Explain your rationale…
A flight from DAL-LAX is $87.00 or 4,694 points on Southwest. That imputes a value of 1.9 cents per UR point. The same flight on United would probably be more expensive, but let’s assume that it was priced the same. United has a uniformed points redemption model. A domestic one-way flight is 12,500 United miles. So, at this valuation, you are receiving $0.007 cents per point. (Not to mention, United doesn’t fly this route direct from DFW) But let’s ignore that and say that the redemption valuation is identical at 1.8 cents per UR point. How is it better to transfer 12,500 UR points to United instead of 4,694 UR points to Southwest? You are expending an additional 7,806 UR points by going that route. Even if you are getting $0.02 per UR point based on the airfare cost, what advantage are you receiving by getting a better per points value when you are spending more UR points to achieve it?
With regards to transferring to Hyatt or Marriott, I don’t understand how this could ever be a good value except in limited circumstances where you are a little short on an award stay and need to top off. Even at a 2:1 exchange rate, it would cost you 12,500 UR points to get one night at a Courtyard Marriott with a redemption value of 25,000 points per night. That’s enough for almost 3 segments of flying DAL-LAX based on the model above. Or, since the actual exchange is 1:1, 3 roundtrip flights from DAL-LAX on Southwest. (Plus an additional 3 tickets for your travel partner if you have a Companion Pass) Assuming that the room costs $200.00 per night, which is average for that redemption level, you are leaving a lot of value on the table. Hotels are slightly better redemption values than gift cards.