The Starwood Preferred Guest American Express bonus offer has increased back to the highest offer at 30,000 points (OFFER EXPIRED). Usually this offer appears for one month during the summer every year for both the personal Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card from American Express and the business version. This is another one of the great hotel credit card offers, and is worth it for anyone who wants a few free nights in a Starwood property. While it’s not an extremely rare campaign, it’s also never certain that the bonus will ever appear again.
Here’s the offer breakdown (OFFER EXPIRED):
- After your first purchase, you will earn 10,000 points.
- After spending $5,000 in the first six months, you will earn 20,000 points.
- *The $65 annual fee is also waived the first year.
Don’t let the minimum spend $5,000 intimidate you, it works out to about $833 per month over the 5 month period. If you need suggestions on how to make the minimum spend work for you, read and get some tips about all the different ways you meet your minimum spend.
If you do decide to apply for the Starwood 30,000 bonus, you have until September 3 before the offer goes away. The Amex terms state that you must be approved before September 3, 2013 to be eligible for the offer. Currently the Starwood website is still only advertising the regular bonus of 25,000 points.
Between both the personal and business cards, you could earn 60k SPG points or potentially transfer them to a partner airline for 75k miles.
To get the business card you can apply as a sole proprietor and even as a start-up business that doesn’t even have any revenue yet. You can just use your social security number when applying as a sole proprietor and list your name as the ‘business name’. If your application status is pending or denied you can call the Amex reconsideration line at 866-314-0237 and follow these tips on how to help get approved for the card.
Here’s a post on how to apply for a business credit card.
Card Perks
The same bonus is offered for both the business and personal card AND you have the ability to apply for both and earn 60k+ points after the minimum spend. You will earn 1 Starwood point for every $1 you spend using the Amex SPG card. When using the card at any Starwood hotels, you will earn 2 Starwood points for each $1 spent.
The $65 annual fee is waived on both the personal and business card for the first year. Keeping the card after the first year you will get 2 stays or 5 nights towards Starwood elite status.
What 30,00 SPG Points Gets You
SPG Properties include the W Hotel, Sheraton, Aloft, St. Regis, LeMeridien, FourPoints, Westin and Element locations. In July, Turkey celebrated the opening of two new SPG properties in Bursa, the Sheraton and Aloft nearby a national park popular for its ski slopes.
The card offer says you can get up to 6 free nights with the 30k bonus points, but really it depends on which category and property you book and also the season when you travel. The 30k points can worth more than 8 nights if you stay at lower-tiered properties.
For example you could get:
- 13 consecutive free nights at the Aloft in Bangkok, Thailand
- 2 free nights at the Sheraton in Stockholm, Sweden (12,000 per night)
You should be able to get at least 2 cents per Starwood point when you redeem for hotels using the cash & points option. At this redemption rate you are essentially getting $600+ in hotels from the 30,000 points.
If you decide to redeem Starwood points for gift cards, you can get around $300 in gift cards. Another way to use your 30,000 points is to redeem them for flights with no blackout dates on 150 airlines using SPG Flights. However if you decide to use them on airfare you will get about $350-400 in value, which is not as much as redeeming them for hotel stays.
Worth It?
The 30,000 Starwood Preferred Guest American Express offer is a great bonus for this card and is worth $600+ in hotel stays. This is the highest offer for this card and only comes around once a year and is a valuable bonus is you have plans to stay at some SPG properties during your travels.
The best part is that even you are not sure if you plan on using them at hotels, you can always transfer points and get 75,000 airline miles which is nothing to sneeze at. Personally I find it very valuable to have hotel points in a variety of programs so I have options on what hotel and location when I want to redeem them for a stay.
The 30,000 SPG offer is worth it if you are thinking about getting the card or applying for some credit card applications in the next month. You might as well bank an additional 5,000 points more than the normal offer.