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Starwood has brought back an offer we last saw earlier this summer in which SPG members can buy Starpoints with a discount of 35% off the regular selling price. While SPG members can buy Starpoints to use to book award nights at upscale hotels, better uses may be to convert the Starpoints to airline miles or to convert them to Marriott Rewards points and then use those to book Flight & Hotel packages.
The Offer Rules
- Buy 5,000 or more Starpoints to get a 35% discount
- Transactions must be completed by 11:59 PM ET 29 December 2017 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.
- SPG members can buy up to 30,000 Starpoints per account per calendar year
The Math
The good news is that if you’re just looking to top up a SPG account and don’t want to buy the full 30,000 Starpoint allowance, you’re not penalised for buying small amounts.
If you purchase 5,000 Starpoints (the minimum needed to trigger the 35% discount)……
…or the full 30,000 Starpoint allowance….
…you will still be buying Starpoints for 2.275 cents each.
Should You Buy Starpoints In The Latest Promotion?
The answer to that question is that it depends on what you plan on using them for.
Buying For Starwood Reward Night Redemptions
This is what the Starwood award chart looks like (click to enlarge):
At a cost of around 2.28 cents a point I don’t see too much value here at the middle or high value properties.
A category 4 property charges 10,000 points for an award night so if you were to buy points in this promotion, that award would essentially cost around $228 – I don’t see that as being great value…and it doesn’t get much better the higher you go up the chart.
If you can book category 1 or 2 property for 2,000 – 3,000 points a night the effective cost would be around $46 – $70 per night….and that can be a great deal.
Buying For Marriott Reward Night Redemptions
Since the merger with Marriott Starpoints transfer over to Marriott Rewards at a rate of 1:3 so, a purchase of 15,000 Starpoints would net 45,000 Marriott Rewards points…..which is enough for a top-level redemption:
15,000 Starpoints would cost $341.25 in this promotion….
…and when top-tier Marriott properties can go for considerably more than $500/night……
……this can be a great use of Starpoints.
Buying For Marriott Flight & Hotel Redemptions
This is a lot of people’s favorite reason to buy Starpoints in a promotion like this.
All the Marriott Flight & Hotel packages charts can be found via this link but let’s take one example to illustrate why this is a popular option:
Three facts to bear in mind:
- Starpoints convert to Marriott Rewards points at a rate of 1:3
- Starpoints cost 2.275 cents each in this promotion.
- You’ll need to have Starpoints or Marriott Rewards points already in your account to make the most of this tactic
If you were to buy the full 30,000 Starpoints you could convert them to 90,000 Marriott Rewards points, add them to your existing Marriott Rewards points and then redeem them for one of the Flight & Hotel packages.
If you were to, for example, redeem 270,000 Marriott Rewards points for a 7-night Category 1-5 package you would get 7 nights in a hotel and 120,000 miles/Avios as well.
As 150,000 Marriott Rewards points would buy you 7 nights in a Category 5 hotel anyway you would have essentially traded the other 120,000 Marriott Rewards Points (270,000 – 150,000) for 120,000 airline miles/Avios.
A 1:1 conversion from Marriott Rewards points to airline miles is a great transfer ratio and would mean that the 30,000 Starpoints you purchased would have converted into airline miles at a 1:3 ratio….which is fantastic!
Buying For Airline Transfers
This is probably my favorite use of Starpoints because you can get some pretty good value out of them this way and because it doesn’t require booking a hotel stay like the Marriott Rewards Flight & Hotel packages.
On of the reasons why Starpoints are so popular is because they can be transferred into to a large number of major airline loyalty programs (35 in total) and, in most cases, Starpoints transfer over at a ratio of 1 Starpoint to 1 Airline mile.
That makes Starpoints a very versatile currency to hold.
On top of that, if you remember to transfer Starpoints in multiples of 20,000, Starwood adds on a 5,000 bonus:
With this in mind, the ideal number of Starpoints to transfer over to an airline’s loyalty program is 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.
How much are you getting the airline miles for?
If you were to purchase 20,000 Starpoints in the current promotion it would cost $455….
…and those Starpoints could then be converted to 25,000 airline miles (for most airlines).
Those airline miles have now essentially cost $455 which, for 25,000 airline miles, comes to 1.82 cents/mile.
That’s a very good deal and close to as low as you can usually buy airline miles for.
How To Buy Starpoints
Here’s a link to the promotion page.
Starwood sells Starpoints through Points.com so you will not get a “travel” category bonus when using a credit card like one of the Chase Sapphire cards. As such you should use whatever credit card earns you the points you value most or the card on which you need to hit a minimum spend.
Bottom Line
A 35% discount is the best offer we ever seen on Starpoints sales but that’s not a good enough reason to buy them.
- If you’re thinking of buying Starpoints to use for Starwood redemptions you’ll probably be better off using them for lower category properties.
- If you’re thinking of buying Starpoints to use for Marriott redemptions you may be able to get some great deals during peak times.
- If you’re thinking of buying Starpoints for Marriott Flight & Hotel packages the number you can purchase won’t be enough so make sure you have points in your account to purchase the package you’re after.
- If you’re thinking of buying Starpoints in oder to convert them to airline miles then make sure you do the math and make sure the airline you’re transferring them to actually releases the awards you’re looking to book.
Most importantly make sure you don’t buy Starpoints to stockpile – no one knows when they’ll be devalued – have a plan and do the math, that way you should be just fine.
[…] Buy Starpoints For 2.28 Cents & That’s A Much Better Deal Than It Sounds […]