My wife and I are getting these cards even though we focus primarily on United miles because after w

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Earlier in the month I outlined how to make the most of Starwood points for hotel stays . The Starwood program has more top-end properties that I d want to stay at than any other chain, and while I don t find the program all that rewarding for earning points from the money I spend at their hotels, there s little question that it s the most valuable hotel program for money spent on a credit card. And their cash and points awards really stretch the value of those points.
The primary thing to know is that when you transfer points into 20,000 airline miles, you get 5000 additional bonus miles . Since most airline partners transfer at a 1:1 ratio, that s like earning 1.25 miles per dollar spent on the card for all spend.
Starwood has a huge array of points transfer options. The value here is being able to move points to wherever you need them, when you need them. You can accumulate points in one program Starwood and then figure out what you want to do with them later. For instance, discount car and truck rental if you decide you want to go to South America then no frequent flyer program offers you better availability than American (because premium cabin award space on American flights is excellent to South America, and there are tons of flights, and also because they are a partner of LAN). If you decide you want to go to Asia or Europe then it may make sense to move the points to US Airways for great Star Alliance business class options, without fuel surcharges.
And you can top off an account. Platinum members discount car and truck rental have no minimum discount car and truck rental point transfer , they can literally discount car and truck rental transfer just 1 point to a frequent flyer program, which is a great way to keep an airline mileage account from expiring. It s also a great way to have partner transaction activity when an airline runs a promotion that requires you to have activity with various hotel partners in order to earn bonus miles. (US Airways caught on in recent iterations of their Grand Slam and began setting a minimum transfer discount car and truck rental amount to qualify for their promotion.) Gold members discount car and truck rental can move as few as 1500 points to an airline program, and non-status members can move 2500 Starpoints at a minimum.
Finally, you can put points into family member frequent flyer accounts since Starwood will allow you to move points between accounts at the same residential discount car and truck rental mailing address, you can put your Starwood points into, say, a spouse s account and then move them to your spouse s frequent flyer program account.
Starwood is not great for transfers to United MileagePlus. The transfer ratio is 2 Starpoints to 1 mile. That s an outlier, remember that Chase bank which issues the United co-branded Visa holds huge sway with MileagePlus, since the issuer of the co-branded credit card provided both debtor-in-possession and exit financing for United s bankruptcy and pre-purchased half a billion dollars worth of miles to provide extra liquidity. Chase clearly wouldn t like it if the Starwood card was better for earning United miles than its own products. But if you want United or other Star Alliance flights you can transfer to US Airways (or to other Star partners).
For non-stop short-distance flights there are few options anywhere as good as transferring Starwood points to LAN. Starpoints transfer at 1:2. It only takes 20,000 points to earn 50,000 LAN kilometers (remember, for every 20,000 points posted to an airline program you get 5000 bonus points). And the LAN chart is great for short distances. This post illustrates how short distance non-stops can be so inexpensive. For instance New York-Boston on American AIrlines would be just 2400 Starpoints one-way. New York-Miami would be just 5600 points one-way.
Some of these are sort of strange. It s amazing that Mexicana Frecuenta remains listed as a partner even though the airline ceased operations in August 2010 (it remains listed on the oneworld website as a member there, as well). And Varig Smiles is now Gol Smiles.
I really like having Miles More as a transfer partner, because Miles More members have access to better reward availability on Lufthansa and Swiss than other Star Alliance programs do. Similarly, Singapore Airlines offers its own members much better premium cabin award space on Singapore discount car and truck rental flights than other Star Alliance frequent flyer program members get. So the ability to move Starpoints to those frequent flyer programs discount car and truck rental can be really useful.
I also especially like having Japan Airlines as a partner. They re updating their award chart on October 1, and long-distance partner awards become discount car and truck rental much cheaper. For instance, Japan Airlines is a partner of Emirates, and redeeming for Emirates first class on the Airbus A380 (onboard showers!) New York Dubai would run 135,000 points under the new scheme. That s 110,000 Starpoints. Emirates first class is really hard to get because they have to few mileage partners, and using Emirates own points the award would be much costlier. (Alaska Airlines, also a Starwood transfer partner, is a new Emirates partner discount car and truck rental and is coming out with its redemption chart soon.) Emirates in general has pretty good award availability and plenty of premium routes, this opens up much of the world connecting through the Middle discount car and truck rental East.
The most points you can transfer in a 24 hour period is 79,999. You wouldn t want to do that, since transferring 80,000 points would get you the next 5000 mile bonus. So you usually want to transfer 60,000 points in a day instead. Then wait until the next day to move more points over.
The biggest drawback to points transfers is that points don t post over to airline in real-time. With Chase Ultimate Rewards, the program is live with several of their transfer programs. Hit transfer and the points discount car and truck rental show up. This is certainly how it works with United and Hyatt, discount car and truck rental my two favorite Chase transfer partnrs. The same is true with American Express Membership Rewards, where transfers to Aeroplan, Delta, and British Airways happen instantaneously (but can take a few days for Singapore Airlines discount car and truck rental and All Nippon).
Starwood, on the other hand, can take longer discount car and truck rental in my experience points transferred to American by end of the business week show up the following Wednesday. That does make it hard, with programs that permit award holds, to set up an award reservation and then transfer points. So there s always a risk of transferring and finding the space you had your eye on is no longer available. You just have to craft your general strategy, e.g. American miles for an award to South America then transfer points and book the award when those points post.
(The links to the Starwood Preferred Guest American discount car and truck rental Express card and Starwood Preferred Guest Business American Express card offer a referral credit to me, they also represent the best currently-available offer. I appreciate your applying through those links very much.)
I keep hearing about how great Starpoints are, but I just don t figure out how you get them. You get 30k for the signup, but that s not huge in this day and age. The hotel itself gives you a really crappy earning ratio, and the card seems far less lucrative than (say) a Sapphire. Where do you get so many?
I personally got a lot of points from signup bonus referrals. I got friends and family to signup for the card. The card gives you 10K for first signing up, then 20K points after spend. My selling point was for 10K you could get a $100 amazon gift card. My family members liked that idea of getting a $100 amazon gift card for basically applying discount car and truck rental and buying a candy bar at the store. This was back when they offered 10K points for referrals (now it is only 5K). The other way is everyday spend and, well, other ways to rack up spend and get points with little or no out of pocket expense (read flyertalk, tons of ideas on there). And of course, get the business card (another 30K).
1. Referrals, Gary gets 5k for each CC applicant using his link. 2. put spending on the credit card. 3 Churn the card (possible 1 year after you cancel the card). 4. Open a business CC d. 5. When staying at the hotel, take advantage of the Best rate guarantee (pick 2k starpoints rather than 10% discount).
My wife and I are getting these cards even though we focus primarily on United miles because after we get our annual United bonus miles, getting 20k miles for $5k in spend is better than 1 mile per dollar. So we ll probably church discount car and truck rental these cards as often as we can for that reason.
I was going to wait closer to the end of the year to shoot for this one; it IS on my list. However, I ve been busy and the hard pulls on my credit report have taken a small toll. So I wanted to wait awhile
Is there any speculation on what the new offer might be? I believe I read that the normal offers are nowhere near the current points w/spend. I guess I m trying to decide how much I lose by sticking to my original plan and going for this card around 1/1/2013.
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