Maximizing SPG’s Nights & Flights Packages 2015

Overview

Starwood Preferred Guest’s Nights & Flights packages allow you to redeem points for a five-night stay in a Category 3 or 4 SPG property and then receive 50,000 airline points or miles to cover your travel. These packages can represent significant point savings when compared with booking a hotel and transferring SPG points to an airline separately. Unfortunately, they are only valid for airlines with a 1:1 transfer ratio. Of the program’s 34 airline partners, only the following aren’t included:

• Air New Zealand
• Gol Smiles
• LAN Airlines LANPASS KMS
• United MileagePlus

Read more: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/11/spg-nights-flights-packages/#ixzz4C2UgQ5I7

Here’s a quick overview of the costs of the packages, as well as the savings you’d get based on doing the redemptions separately:

	Category 3	Category 4
Nights & Flights package	60,000 points	70,000 points
Five-night stay (regular price)	28,000 points	40,000 points
50,000 miles (regular price)	40,000 points	40,000 points
SAVINGS	8,000 points	10,000 points

What’s interesting is that the SPG website actually claims the savings are 18,000 points and 20,000 points at Category 3 and Category 4 properties, respectively. However, that doesn’t take into account the fifth night free that SPG provides to members when they redeem points for stays of five nights or longer. You’re still saving 8,000-10,000 points, which equates to $200-$250 (based on TPG’s most recent valuations).

So how do you decide whether these redemptions are worthwhile? As a general rule of thumb, I recommend the following formula:

Total Package Price – Standard Redemption Cost = Cost (in SPG points) of purchasing the airline points/miles.

The additional Starpoints above the standard cost for a five-night award stay are basically being used to purchase the 50,000 airline miles. You’ll need to answer a simple question: Is it worth spending the extra Starpoints to get the airline points/miles, or should you just redeem the points for the five-night stay and keep the rest for future redemptions? In other words, when are the airline points or miles you receive worth more than the additional Starpoints required?

Each of these packages has a different effective conversion rate for using Starpoints to “purchase” airline miles:

• Category 3 Nights & Flights: 32,000 points = 50,000 airline miles
• Category 4 Nights & Flights: 30,000 points = 50,000 airline miles

As you’ll see, there are times when it makes sense to pull the trigger and other times when you should stick with a standard award stay and ignore these Nights & Flights packages — and it all depends on how you value both SPG points and your chosen airline’s currency. For the purposes of my analysis, I will use TPG’s most recent valuations to calculate when it makes sense to book these packages for each of the 16 airlines he includes on the list.

Other Considerations

Of course, taking a look at the monetary value of the points you’re redeeming and the miles you’re receiving is just one part of the puzzle. There are two other key considerations when it comes to booking a Nights & Flights package with Starwood Preferred Guest.

1. Value of the hotel stay

In the above analysis, I used TPG’s valuations to quantify how much your 50,000 miles are worth. However, this ignored the fact that you might not be getting solid value out of the actual hotel stay. TPG pegs Starpoints at 2.5 cents apiece, the highest of any hotel and airline program out there. While you can definitely get more value out of your points (my recent award redemption at the Equinox Resort & Spa actually gave me a value of almost 8 cents per point!), there are also times when it doesn’t make sense to use your points, either because the property isn’t luxurious enough or the revenue rates are so low that you should just pay for the stay.

2. Award availability

The other big aspect of the Nights & Flights package to consider is availability. The hotel side of things is relatively straightforward – the property either has a room using points or it doesn’t. You can use SPG.com to search this award inventory. Any hotel that shows a standard award available should be bookable through Nights & Flights.

The much more challenging aspect is finding and utilizing award inventory on your flights. In an ideal world, you would book one of these packages, receive 50,000 airline miles/points and immediately lock in your desired flights on your desired dates. The reality is that availability for airline award tickets is far from a science and in some cases is essentially non-existent.

Fortunately, there are some methods that will help in this search, and my personal favorite is ExpertFlyer. This allows you to search for award inventory on numerous airlines, including the vast majority of SPG transfer partners. For more information, check out my post on how ExpertFlyer alerts can help you find award availability.

Bottom Line

SPG’s Nights & Flights packages can be a great option if you’re planning a trip to a Category 3 or 4 property. However, be sure to crunch the numbers before deciding which package makes the most sense – or whether to pull the trigger at all! It would be nice if these were eventually expanded to higher categories, but when you factor in the plethora of ways to redeem the miles you’d receive, these packages can open up a world of travel.

Read more: http://thepointsguy.com/2015/11/spg-nights-flights-packages/#ixzz4C2XRvnWJ