Meanderings of a Traveler
Starwood, now part of Marriott, has announced their Q1 promotion for 2017. Called SPG Double Take, you earn double-points on your first three stays and some decent bonuses beyond that. An extra 10,000 points once you hit 20 nights, for example.
You can register on the SPG Promo Dashboard. Registration is between December 15th and March 15th, and the stays have to be completed between January 16th and April 15th.
Read up on the details over at One Mile at a Time!
Greg over at FrequentMiler recently shared his experience with United’s Last Seat Availability guarantee that he received thanks to his Marriott status (Marriott’s Platinum status grants you Silver with United, once you link the accounts), and that reminded me that since the acquisition of SPG by Marriott went through on Friday, those who had SPG Platinum would also have this once they linked their accounts!
If you don’t have status with United (or SPG/Marriott), don’t worry – you can still get access to this feature with United’s credit card through Chase. In fact, Greg goes on to detail a few other very helpful perks offered by a variety of credit cards that cardholders might not know to take advantage of. Though some of them won’t apply in the near future, such as Citi Prestige’s golf, the list is a good resource for those wanting to make the most of their cards.
Don’t forget to link your accounts – you never know when you will need to buy a last minute ticket!
Lucky, over at OneMileAtATime, has detailed instructions on how to connect your Starwood Preferred Guest number to your Marriott Rewards number. It only takes a few minutes, and the status match is virtually instantaneous. It already matched my Platinum SPG!
In another post, he details some of the benefits of this link. The big thing to note is that the connection isn’t one way – you can transfer Starpoints at a 1:3 ratio to Marriott Rewards points, or go the other way and transfer 3 Marriott points to one Starpoint. Since AmEx changed their signup bonus this year, that means you can use the Marriott credit card to convert 80,000 Rewards points into just over 29,000 Starpoints!
Similarly, SPG Platinums are Marriott Platinums, which means we get complimentary United Silver Elite status. United Gold Elite members are Marriott Gold as well, so they can match to SPG Gold! Not a bad deal, all things considered.
If we keep all the programs separate, I can live with this! At the very least, it seems that the programs will remain independent until 2018, so that is a relief as I love the Starwood Preferred Guest program.
What are your thoughts on the merger?