Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) has launched a new offer for those that would like to purchase some Starpoints. You can get up to 25% discount for buying minimum of 20,000 points. This offer is valid until December 31, 2015.
You can purchase for your account or receive as a gift maximum of 20,000 Starpoints in a calendar year. The account that receives Starpoints must have been open for a minimum of 14 days.
You can access the Starwood SPG Website for this offer here.
• Get 10% off 5,000–9,500 Starpoints
• Get 15% off 10,000–14,500 Starpoints
• Get 20% off 15,000–19,500 Starpoints
• Get 25% off 20,000 Starpoints
The price of the 20,000 Starpoints is $525. The price of a Starpoint is 2.63 cents each.
Doe it make sense to purchase Starpoints at this price?
Starwood has greatly devalued the Starpoints by the yearly category creep. There can be some values left during special events and high season.
This is, however, a good way to purchase partner airline miles at 2.1 cents each. You can convert 20,000 Starpoints to 25,000 airline miles in most partner programs (not on United’s and some others – see the table below).
You can do even better if you wait for a conversion bonus offer that airline programs often have.
I would consider to transfer points into accounts where purchasing miles is either not possible or quite expensive such as Singapore Airlines or Lufthansa Miles & More (Lufthansa only worth it because of the enhanced availability).
Considering that SPG has been purchased by Marriott yesterday this might be one of the last offers available to buy SPG points.
Conclusion
I would only purchase Starpoints if you are planning to convert them to airline miles or if you have some special use for them. In my opinion it’s rarely worth it to use SPG points for hotel stays these days.
Remember that you can make the purchase using several SPG accounts and later pool them all into one account as long as the addresses are same. Don’t open fictitious accounts, however.
This might be worth it for Amtrak points for Acela travel. Since SPG xfers to Amtrak at 1:1 (but no 5,000 point bonus) and Amtrak pts are worth ~2.9 cpp for Acela travel, it’s a minor discount.
However if you’re going for non-Acela travel, the value drops down to ~2.56 (and even worse if you find a cheap Saver fare), so it won’t be worth it.