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Today is the last day to take advantage of the current 35% SPG Starpoints sale, so if you’ve been meaning to take advantage, don’t forget!
Recap
Starpoints normally cost ~2.46p (3.5 cents), so with the 35% Starpoints discount, you’re looking at about 1.6p (2.275 cents) each.
As usual, your SPG account has to be at least 14 days old to participate and you can only purchase a maximum of 30,000 Starpoints per calendar year (fairly easy to get around if you want more).
Good deal?
For Category 1 and 2 hotel redemptions, which require 2,000-4,000 Starpoints, you could effectively book rooms for between ~£32 and ~£64 per night, which could lead to solid savings.
More interesting for most readers though, is the fact that Starpoints can be transferred to a vast array of airline partners at a generous 1:1 rate – with an additional 5,000 Miles bonus when you transfer in blocks of 20,000.
For example, if you bought 20,000 Starpoints for ~£320, you could transfer them over to Alaska Mileage Plan and receive 25,000 Alaska Miles. In other words, your cost per Alaska Mile would be just ~1.28p per Mile, which is superb value!
Marriott Travel Packages are a very tempting option too.
I’ll be sharing some of my favourite redemption sweet spots in an article later this evening, so keep an eye out for that.
Bottom line
The real beauty of buying SPG Starpoints is that you can transfer them wherever you want them, whenever you need to. Buying a specific type of Miles carries substantial risk (availability, devaluation, change of plans, etc), but opting for Starpoints instead helps mitigate that.
Suffice to say that having a stash of discounted SPG Starpoints can be very, very useful.
Any chance of a devaluation or a drop in the conversion rate to Marriott any time soon ??
May be not until merger, but agree definitely have to have enough points in account for Marriott Travel Package and hope the airline of your choice has some transfer bonus like BA (Although I would never transfer to BA) currently does!
I would say there’s no chance of 3:1 changing. But of course post merger there can be all kinds of devaluations if they so choose.
45,000 probably isn’t sustainable as a cap for Marriott awards once you include some of those amazing SPG hotels that currently go for 30-35K (90-105 Marriott equivalent). But who knows… they probably don’t want to have the merger perceived as a massive devaluation either.