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- Perks of the Starwood Preferred Guest credit card
- Understanding Starwoods Cash & Points Redemption
- Getting your 5th Night Free with Starwood Points
- Redeeming your Points for Hotels & Flights
- Transferring your SPG Points to Airline Miles
- Getting Starwood Status and the Perks
- Top 10 Starwood Preferred Guest Program Questions
So if you are a Platinum member and you book a basic room with cash and points or points only are you still eligible for a suite upgrade?
@perry – yes! Assuming available open check in.
Regarding SPG Gold status with the American Express Platinum, can I be a secondary cardholder and still get Gold?
@Eugene – Yes, even if you are a secondary card holder you are still able to get SPG gold status. The only thing is for primarily and secondary card holders you must call Amex to get the gold status activated, it will not be applied automatically.
I have Amex Personal Gold & Business Gold cards, and recently signed up for SPG Personal & Business as well. Gold cards are coming up for renewal shortly and wanted to cancel one of the gold cards as they provide almost the same bonuses apart from the Open Savings on Business Card.
Now as SPG Business also comes with Open Savings benefits, planning on closing Business Gold – what do you recommend? One of the primary reasons to have open savings is for hertz rentals and Marriott stays – I travel a lot for work and 10% on car rentals, 5% on hotel stays are good add-ons.
TIA
Could you please provide a link to your valuation calculations for SPG points? And especially to how you’re getting $.13/point in value!
@Scott – The Le Meridien Dead Sea goes for around $250/night. That is a pretty average rate for the hotel (although I was able to find AAA rate for $232 some nights). Since this is a category 1 hotel, it only requires 2,000 points a night for a free night. Depending on the best rate you can get and what the taxes are (is isn’t giving me the exact price after tax), you can get anywhere between 11-14 cents per point for this particular hotel. This is more of an extreme example, but a great usage of points!
Can I signup for the card, earn the bonus, and cancel one year from now to avoid the annual fee? I already have the Business card so I’m just applying for the personal version to earn the points. Is this OK from a credit report perspective too?
@John – Yes, you can also cancel your credit card prior to avoiding the annual fee. From a credit report perspective, all activity will affect it. Opening a new card and closing a card does hit your credit report, anywhere between 2-5 points typically. Although typically after putting some spend on the card and paying off a few bills it will then go up.
I applied for a personal card yesterday and got approved – but I am worried that I may not be able to meet the $5000 spending requirement within 6 months. If I get a secondary card for a family member, will their spending on that card count towards my minimum spending?
@Kathy – I will look into that and get back to you. However, there are many other ways to meet the minimum spend requirements, and the best one is amazon payments. You can do up to $1,000 a month for no fee.
Does having SPG Gold status through either 30k spend on the Starwood Amex or via the Platinum card shorten the requirements for SPG Platinum Status, i.e. Amex Platinum or 30k spend gives you 25 nights towards the 50 night total necessary for Platinum Status?
@Trey – Unfortunately it does not. If you have the SPG Amex card though you get 2 stays/5 nights towards status (Gold and Platinum).
Would I be able to use just points to pay for 3 nights at a category 5 hotel (3 nights = ~48,000 points) and pay for the last 2 nights with the cash & points option (2 nights = 9600 points + $180) – total of 57,600 points and $180.
Or would it be better to pay for 4 nights using only points (64,000 points) and get the 5th night free?
@Stephen – It looks like the hotel you are looking at is requiring a peak number of points to be used during your stay, 16,000 points per night vs. 12,000 points per night, is that correct? Personally, since it looks like cash & points is available, I’d use the C&P option for your entire stay, or maybe it is only available the last two nights? Assuming it is only available the last two nights, you’d be spending an additional 6,400 points to save $180. If this is an international property, remember that sometimes you need to pay taxes on the cash portion. So using points would value each point at 2.8 cents per point. I do not know how you typically redeem your points, but 2.8 cents per point is a good value. I like to get a minimum of 2 cents per point, but typically really go for the 3 cents per point minimum value.
Sorry I should have included that information in my original post! I’m new to “points” world and am trying to book a honeymoon next year based solely on points, if possible. We were planning on spending 10 days in Hawaii: 5 days in Maui and 5 days in Kauai. I plan on staying at the Hyatt Andaz, which seems to be a Category 6, so that will be 22,000 UR points/night.
I already have some UR points accumulated from my Chase freedom, but my fiance and I are planning on signing up for:
-2 Chase CSP – 40,000 sign up bonus + 3000 points (to meet minimum spend)
-1 Chase Ink Bold – 50,000 sign up bonus + 5000 points (to meet minimum spend)
-Currently have ~16,000 points on Chase Freedom
Total UR Points = 157,000 points
156,000 points can get me 5 free nights with 47,000 points leftover to be applied to United Airline for the tickets (I think I read somewhere that it was 80,000 UR points for 2 round trip tickets to HI from NY?).
We will also be applying for the Amex SPG each:
-2 Amex SPG – 25,000 sign up bonus + 5000 (to meet minimum spend)
Total Starwood Points = 60,000 points
I assumed that 60,000 points (for the Category 5 hotel – Westin Princeville Villas) are good 3 nights (16,000/night) or 12 nights + $1080 (using the Cash & Points option). I don’t have the SPG currently so I am not certain if the Westin does charge 16,000/night? I also wasn’t sure if it was possible to pay for the first 3 nights with just points (3 nights = 48,000 points) and then for the last 2 nights use the C&P option (2 nights = 9600 points + $180)? This option would leave me with 2,400 Starwood points leftover. Let me know if my plan seems feasible and if you could offer any suggestions/clarification – thanks!
On question #6 you answered for gold but what about platinum….I make gold by 30,000 spend and could spend more but I don’t see any way to do it for platium
#6 “Aside from staying at Starwood properties, is there any other way to earn Platinum status?”
@kristy – unfortunately you can’t earn platinum by spending a certain amount of money on the card.