Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) has launched new offer for buying and gifting Starpoints at 35% off that is valid through March 16, 2018.
You can purchase for your account or receive as a gift maximum of 30,000 Starpoints in a calendar year (this used to be 20,000). 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.
READ MORE: SPG Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
And the price:
The price of a Starpoint is 2.28 cents each when the maximum allowed amount is purchased.
Purchase Process:
The receipt states that it may take up to 24 hours for the points to post to your account.
You get an email receipt as well that the purchase has been completed and the points have been deposited to your SPG account.
And there they are immediately without any wait.
Does it make sense to purchase Starpoints at this price?
Starwood has devalued the Starpoints by the yearly category creep. There can be some values left during special events, high season and at lower category properties.
You can also buy Starpoints to convert them to Marriott Rewards points that are cheaper to purchase this way.
This is, however, a good way to purchase partner airline miles at reasonable price. 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 is only worth it because of the enhanced availability).
You can also consider this as a way to purchase Marriott Rewards points at 0.76 cents each and use them towards Travel Packages (read more here).
Conclusion
This is the highest general discount that Starwood has ever sold Starpoints. They had one Mystery Bonus late 2016 where some accounts had up to 50% discount.
I have purchased Starpoints during these sales and just did buy my allotment for 2018. Those that buy early in the year will likely be able to buy more later just like in 2017.
My plan to use all my Starpoints is eventually to use them towards Marriott Travel Packages. Will probably end up close to 10 category 1 – 5 one week stays…..
Here are the terms and conditions of this sale:
Transactions must be completed between 9:00 AM ET February 1, 2018 and 11:59 PM ET March 16, 2018 to be eligible for the discount. Purchased points do not count towards Preferred Guest, Gold Preferred Guest, or Platinum Preferred Guest Status. Transactions are final and nonrefundable. All other terms and conditions of the Starwood Preferred Guest Program apply.
Please Note: Excluding promo periods, cost is $.035 per point. Purchase up to 30,000 per account per calendar year; points are applicable toward all Starpoint awards but do not count toward elite status. All other Starwood Preferred Guest program rules, terms and conditions apply.
Any idea if we use these to transfer to Marriott, if the transferred points will count towards Marriott lifetime status? I see that it doesn’t count towards SPG status, but wondering if it will transfer to Marriott with lifetime credit?
They don’t. … bought 30k and transferred to Marriott but not reflected in my life time points.
Thanks!!
If your “spouse” or someone else living at the same address with you does it, then it does when combining towards an award. The second MR account will be left with negative lifetime balance, however.
They don’t. … bought 30k and transferred to Marriott but not reflected in my life time points.
Hey guys –
Help me out on this one. If I buy 30K SPG points given the figures above and transfer them to Marriott as 90K points, I’m essentially getting nine 10K award nights (Cat 2 – what I would generally be looking for anyhow) for about $76 tax each tax inclusive. That’s not a horrible deal, but it’s not a screaming bargain either.
I’ve never gone the route of buying the Marriott travel packages, nor have I sat down and done the math on them, though I’ve read several of John’s pieces about them and they certainly sound like an interesting option.
My wife and I are more along the lines of upper budget to low mid-tier hotels, as we don’t spend a lot of time in the hotel rooms. We have no problem getting our lodging needs met for $75-100 per night. (Much less when you throw in promos such as Accelerate, etc). So what am I getting for my effort here? Is there something I’m missing?
Thanks for any thoughts you all might have,
Jeff
Marriott Travel Package for 270K points basically gets you one week at category 1 -5 property + minimum of 132K United miles or usually 157K when UA has conversion promo.
From 2018 on, marriott rewards are less useful because they discontinued marriott status buy back program. You can only either redeem for Travel package or 5th night free for best options
Keep in ming that if you purchase with an AMEX SPG card, you get an additional 1,365 Starpoints, bringing the cost down to 2.18 cents/point. Also @John_Ollila:disqus you can cancel your 10 (fairly unusable) certificates and get 450,000 points which is almost enough for another 2 air+hotel packages.
I have not had problem using the hotel parts of travel package but obviously you need to be flexible. The last two were at the JW Marriott Phu Quoc in Vietnam.
But if you do not want the hotel part at all and want more miles then yes.
You’re right in that my travel style doesn’t really support using the certificates (certainly not 10) but they can be useful. I also realized recently that you can get value out of the certificates staying much less than 7 nights. I used one for only 4 nights which would have cost many more points than the 45K I would have gotten back and the extra days supported a very early arrival on day one without waiting for checkin.