Buy SPG Starpoints With 30% Discount

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Starwood has come up with another “buy Starpoints” promotion less than 3 weeks after the last promotion ended. Last time out the promotion was targeted at those who hold one or more of the Starwood American Express credit cards and it offered a 35% discount on Starpoint purchases. This latest promotion only offers a 30% discount (until 1 July 2016) but it appears to be open to all SPG members.

Buy Starpoints For 2.45 Cents Each

To be eligible for the 30% discount you have to be prepared to purchase a minimum of 5,000 Starpoints but you can purchase Starpoints in increments of 500 after that.

This Starpoints promotion is about as simple as it gets because, as long as you buy 5,000 or more Starpoints, the cost per Starpoints doesn’t vary – you’re always buying at 2.45 cents/Starpoint.

The maximum number of Starpoints you can buy in this promotion (or in a calendar year) is 30,000 and, under these promotion conditions, that would set you back $735:

What To Do With Starpoints

Starpoints are one of my favorite currencies despite the fact that they are one of the harder currencies to collect in any significant quantity.

The reason why I like Starpoints quite as much as I do is because they’re so incredibly versatile – they can be transferred into to just about every major airline rewards program out there (35 in total) and, in most cases, they transfer over at a ratio of 1 Starpoint to 1 airline mile.

On top of that, when you transfer over Starpoints to an airline rewards program in multiples of 20,000, Starwood adds on a 5,000 bonus.

That makes the ideal Starpoint transfer either 20,000, 40,000 or 60,000 (maximum allowed in one transfer is 79,999) as those transfers will earn you 5,000, 10,000 and 15,000 bonus points/miles respectively.

If you don’t need/want airline miles then you can always take the more obvious route of using your Starpoints for stays at Starwood properties worldwide. Here’s the Starwood award chart (click to expand):

Should You Buy Starpoints At 2.45 Cents?

Although the current promotion isn’t the best we’ve seen it is the best promotion that’s been open to everyone – so if you don’t have an SPG Amex card this is probably as good as it gets for you.

Buying Starpoints For Airline Miles

• If you were to purchase 20,000 miles in the current promotion (at 2.45 cents each) they would cost you $490
• The 20,000 miles you purchase could then be converted to 25,000 airline miles (for most airlines)
• You’ve now essentially paid $490 for 25,000 airline miles which comes to 1.96 cents/mile

Up until last year that would have been a reasonable deal for an airline currency like American’s but their recent spate of devaluations has seen the value of AAdvantage Miles plummet.

Finding the best uses for Starpoints via an airline conversion often requires a bit of lateral thinking so, rather than focusing specifically on the airlines that you can transfer Starpoints to, you need to consider those airlines’ partners.

A great example of this is Virgin America’s Elevate program.

Transferring Starpoints to Elevate to use for Virgin America flights isn’t a good idea at all…… but transferring them to use on Virgin Australia (a Virgin Elevate partner) is a whole other matter.

Virgin Australia has just started upgrading its Business Class cabins to a product that looks very nice indeed (blog with more information is here)…..

…and you can fly from the West Coast to Australia (one way) on Virgin Australia for 45,000 Elevate points.

30,000 Starpoints convert to 35,000 Elevate points so you’re not going to get a Virgin Australia award from this promotion alone…but you’ll be well on your way.

Note: All thoughts of converting Starpoints to airline miles should be put on hold until you have a full understanding of what award availability for your chosen rewards program is like – award flights to Australia, for example, are not easy to find.

Buying Starpoints For Hotel Nights

12,000 Starpoints will get you a night at a reasonable Starwood property and, at the rate offered by the current promotion, that would cost you $294.

Hotel Bristol Vienna – A Starwood Category 5 Hotel

That’s probably at the very limit of what I’d pay for a category 5 Starwood property so I’m not a buyer at these rates.

It gets worse one category up where an award night costs 20,000 Starpoints ($490 in this promotion). Category 6 hotels sell for under $490 on a very regular basis so, unless you have a very specific use in mind where you know you’ll be saving money, this is definitely not a reason to buy Starpoints.

Bottom Line

Other than if you’re topping up a SPG account to round off an award booking this is not a promotion to use for hotel nights…at least not in the vast majority of cases (please don’t email in if you find the one in a hundred occasion where this isn’t true!)

There can be value to be had in buying Starpoints to transfer over to an an airline’s rewards program but you still need to be very careful:

• You can’t buy enough Starpoints in this promotion alone for a major airline award.
• Airline awards aren’t always easy to find
• Starpoints don’t transfer to airlines immediately so, even when you find an airline award you want to book, you need to be able to put it on hold before you transfer Starpoints.

The bottom line is this: make sure you’ve done your math and make sure you have a solid plan for the Starpoints before you jump in a buy a few thousand – holding on to points “just in case they’re useful later on” is a great way to get caught out by a sudden devaluation – and that’s when things can get expensive.