Starwood Preferred Guest

As reported in Upgrade- Travel Better, there are two new websites for people wanting to figure out the best deals they can get with their frequent flier miles or hotel points.

MileMaven helps travelers find the most number of frequent flier miles for your flights. PointMaven does the same thing, but for hotel points.

I often find it is difficult to find information about ways to earn extra points and these guys consolidate it pretty well.

There is a lot of info available- check them out!

There was a good article in the New York Times this week explaining how the major hotel chains are increasing the points required for a free room stay by as much as 40%!!

Basically it is showing how several of the major hotel chains are increasing the number of points required to redeem for a hotel room across their locations. So for people saving their hotel points for a vacation- it may end up taking them a lot longer than they expected.

The article specifically mentions that Starwood, Hyatt, and Hiltons hotels are doing this. It does not mention Marriott. Way to go Marriott!

This has already happened in the airline industry- it cost me 80,000 Aeroplan miles to get from Canada to Scotland earlier this year when it used to be a lot less.

I don’t understand how large companies think that this is a good practice as the biggest collectors of hotel points are usually the hotel chains’ best and most frequent guests. Everybody understands an increase, but not a huge one as seems to be the case.

My tip for today is to count the points you have and use as soon as needed, because if you wait- your next chance to use them may cost you more.

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In my last post I discussed one of my favorite hotel programs- Marriott Rewards.

In this post I would like to point out the advantages of my next favorite hotel program: Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG).

Starwood has fewer properties than Marriott (around 800 compared to Mariott’s 2,700), but on average I think they are nicer hotels.

There is one huge benefit to Starwood’s Preferred Guest Program. In terms of flexibility to exchange points for airmiles, you will not find a better program than SPG. You can transfer 20,000 points into 25,000 airmiles on most major airlines . This is incredibly useful if you need a few extra points to take a free trip somewhere.

Additionally, even though there have been rumours about one, Marriott does not have a partner credit card in Canada. For Canadians, MBNA has a Starwood Preferred Guest Mastercard. Here are the features of this card:

Earn 1 Starpoint for every $2 spent on all your eligible purchases.

Activation Bonus of 5,000 Starpoints^® after your first purchase on the card.

Starwood Hotel Stay Bonus 5,000 Starpoints the first time you charge a stay at any Starwood hotel or resort to your Starwood Preferred Guest MasterCard.

Annual Bonuses 5,000 Starpoints for every $10,000 you spend (up to 15,000 Starpoints each year).

No annual fee.

For a credit card with No Annual Fee this adds up to a lot of bonuses on this card. If you spend a total of $30,000 per year on the card, you will end up with 35,000 points the first year, and 30,000 points in subsequent years. As you can usually fly anywhere in North America for 25,000 miles, you can exchange your points for 3 flights in North America every 2 years.

In fact- if you were to get this credit card and use it just once, it woudl be well worth it, because on your first use you get 5,000 points which is enough for a free night at a category 2 hotel.

In my last post I talked about frequent flier miles and some basic rules to consider. Aside from the obvious, which is collecting frequent flier miles directly from the airlines, there are many other ways to collect miles. Here are a couple of ideas:

• Car rental agencies have their own programs, but they will often also give you frequent flier points as a bonus for renting with them.
• Credit card companies are probably the best way to collect additional miles; many cards will allow you to collect one mile per dollar spent on the card. If you travel for business this can add up to a lot of miles. I have averaged 50,000 spending per year in the last few years which is enough for 2 short haul flights in North America or one flight to Europe ever year. Even if you do not travel for business if you put most of your expenses on credit cards it will add up to a lot.
• There is a third category which will also give you miles but in actual fact you are probably better off signing up to their own programs and that is hotels. Hotels usually have points programs of their own which can be very useful. Starwood hotels has a very good program called preferred guest which allows you to collect points to use for hotel rooms, but it has one other special feature- these points can also be converted to points on most major airlines- so if you are missing some points for your next reward ticket you can transfer it from your preferred guest account.

If you get a credit card which is partnered with Starwood preferred guest you have the best of all worlds- you will collect a lot of points for hotels which can be transferred to airlines if needed. In Canada we have the MBNA MasterCard and in the United States there is the American Express for this.