The Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express is one of my favorite credit cards. With this credit card, you can accumulate starpoints for free hotel stays. You can also use starpoints to redeem a gift card from Amazon.com or Banana Republic, GAP and Starbucks etc. If you like, you can also transfer starpoints to many airline miles including AA, UA and Delta Airlines. If you apply now, you can get 10,000 bonus starpoints.
Starwood Preferred Guest program introduced the SPG Flights yesterday, a new redemption opportunity, which allows you to redeem your starpoints for a free airline ticket without any restrictions. This is the first hotel rewards program to offer airline ticket redemption option. This truly will benefit all starwood preferred guest members. Another obvious advantage of the SPG Flights over other airline rewards programs is you can redeem Starpoints for airline tickets whenever you choose, even during peak periods such as holidays.Thus you can avoid the standard restrictions that limit most frequent-flyer awards program.
With SPG Flights, you can choose hundreds of airlines over the world with no blackout dates. If there’s a seat available for purchase with cash, you can use your Starpoints. If you don’t have enough starpoints in your account, you can buy starpoints and use them for airline ticket redemption immediately.
Use your starpoints at SPG Flight is very easy:
1. Search for flights at www.spg.com/flights
2. Select your flight from many available options
3. Redeem Starpoints for an airline ticket
4. Fly
According to the SPG Flights Starpoints Chart, I think redeem airline ticket is much better option than other kinds of redemption choices.
SPG Flights Starpoints Chart (Thanks Sander for reminding me of this!)
up to $150 10,000
$150-$215 15,000
$215-$280 20,000
$280-$345 25,000
$345-$410 30,000
$410-$475 35,000
$475-$540 40,000
$540-$605 45,000
$605-$670 50,000
$670-$735 55,000
$735-$800 60,000
$800-$865 65,000
$865-$930 70,000
$930-$995 75,000
$995-$1060 80,000
Higher prices (examples)
$2,880-$3,140 235,000
$4,960-$5,220 395,000
$9,900-$10,160 775,000
Starwood Preferred Guest has been known for having the industry’s best redemption program.I hope they can keep current excellent work and offer more rewards opportunities.
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September 5th, 2008 at 6:23 am
A minimum of 125,000 SPG points are needed to redeem a round trip ticket to China. Compared to a mere 50,000 requirement for AA, don’t you think it’d be a better idea to transfer the points to your AAdvantage accounts than to redeem directly for a ticket there. This new option is kinda good for nothing, to be honest.
September 5th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Great post! Here you might want to add the following chart: (it seems they makes it always less than 1:1.5, which is not vert great compared to hotel redemption. However, it does provide a flexible option)
Ticket Price* Starpoints
up to $150 10,000
$150-$215 15,000
$215-$280 20,000
$280-$345 25,000
$345-$410 30,000
$410-$475 35,000
$475-$540 40,000
$540-$605 45,000
$605-$670 50,000
$670-$735 55,000
$735-$800 60,000
$800-$865 65,000
$865-$930 70,000
$930-$995 75,000
$995-$1060 80,000
Higher prices (examples)
$2,880-$3,140 235,000
$4,960-$5,220 395,000
$9,900-$10,160 775,000
September 5th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Hi Sander, thank you very much!
September 5th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Hi blauaugen, if you can redeem a round trip ticket to China with only 50,000 AA miles, then certainly you should transfer starpoints to AA miles. The problem is AA increased the minimum miles you need to redeem a round trip to China or other places.