11 Ways to Use Your Starwood Points

How to Earn & Use Starwood Points:

§  Part 1:  Earning, Transferring, and Preventing Your Points From Expiring

§  Part 2:  11 Ways to Use Your Starwood Points

§  Part 3:  The 9 Best Airline Transfer Partners

§  Part 4:  The Best Kept Secret of Nights & Flights

§  Part 5:  Starwood Elite Status

§  Part 6:  Regular Starwood Hotel Redemptions

§  Part 7: Using Points for Upgrades

http://millionmilesecrets.com/2013/08/08/starwood-points-value/

Bottom Line

Nights & Flights can be a great use of Starwood points when you want to redeem for both a hotel stay and for airline miles.

2 cards can get you and your partner 5 nights in a category 3 Starwood hotel and 50,000 air miles which is good for 2 round-trip coach flights within the US!  Remember that you can transfer points for free to anyone else’s Starwood account (as long as you have the same address).

You pay only 60,000 Starwood points for 50,000 miles (2 domestic airline tickets) and 5 nights at a Category 3 hotel.

70,000 Starwood points will get you 2 domestic airline tickets and 5 nights at a Category 4 hotel.

Link:  5th Night Free

You get a 5th night free when you book 4 award nights.  Unfortunately this isNOT available for category 1 and 2 hotels or for ANY reservation with Cash & Points.

The free night doesn’t qualify for any promotions or elite night credits.

Link:  Transfer to Miles

Starwood is the only hotel program which lets you transfer hotel points to many airlines in a 1:1 ratio.  The most useful transfer partners to me are American Airlines, US Airways, Alaska Air and a few others.  Note that transfers to United aren’t a good value because they are in a 2:1 ratio.

What makes this even better is that Starwood transfers another 5,000 points for every 20,000 points you transfer to an airline.  This means that you are earning 1.25 airline miles per 1 Starwood point transferred (if you transfer in increments of 20,000 Starwood hotel points).

So up to 30,000 Starwood points from either the personal or business credit card will transfer to 35,000 air miles.  Transfers aren’t instant, and sometime can take ~10 days (though they are often sooner).

However, you have to book night and flight awards on the phone.  You can’t book these online.

I like the option of being able to use Starwood points for flights, but I don’t think it’s the best value.  Starwood even agrees in their Flight Awards FAQs!

However, the greatest value of Starpoints will always be for Free Night Award stays at Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide.

For example, it would cost you 60,000 Starwood Points for a ticket that cost between $735 to $800.

But for those same 60,000 Starwood Points, you could stay 3 nights in aCategory 6 hotel like the W New York Times Square which costs an average of $400 a night.

So those 60,000 Starwood Points that would get you $735 to $800 in airline tickets, would get you ~$1,200 in hotel stays.