Triangle Trip

While I rarely fill out surveys, I recently completed one for Starwood Preferred Guests; it asked many leading questions that strongly implied:

1.  SPG will be implementing rollover nights – if you’ve already achieved status this calendar year, the extra stays/nights will be applied toward next year’s status. This is in response to Marriott’s Elite Rollover Nights program. SPG will probably roll this out in October.

2.  If SPG doesn’t implement Rollover Nights, they will definitely be implementing some kind of point acceleration program, again sometime in October. They typically do this every year.

3.  SPG may remove the 500 point bonus reward for Platinum members. Currently, when SPG Platinum members check in, they can choose one of three rewards: an extra 500 points added to their account, a $10 credit for the minibar, or a free movie. The leading questions on the survey led me to believe they may take away the 500 bonus points.

Without the 500 point bonus reward program, there is no real incentive to be, or become a Platinum status SPG. Platinum and Gold members accrue the same amount of bonus points and get access to the SPG Club Lounges where available. The 500 bonus points you get at check-in as a Platinum member gives you 1/6 of the way to earning a free night at a category 1 hotel (3000 points per night for week days and 2000 points for weekends). I really hope SPG doesn’t take away the 500 bonus point reward program; otherwise, or I’ll have to consider another chain.

Continuing its generosity, Starwood (SPG) is offering free weekend nights for every two stays at their hotels. You can redeem weekend nights (Friday, Saturday and Sunday) right after you have earned them but I think you will need to redeem it before September. This is a great excuse to go on vacation! Here’s the preview link for more details on the offer. Note this offer is not live yet, you will need to revisit SPG’s site to register later this month.

SPG’s current 500 bonus points per night will end this month (April 30, 2009). This follow up offer starts on May 1 and ends July 31, 2009. The SPG offer is still better than Hilton’s 1,000 bonus point per night offer (see previous post). For the next three months (13 weeks), you can potentially earn 10+ free weekend nights if you stayed at a SPG property every week.

For the traveling rookies/novices, each hotel stay means each time you checkin to a hotel. If you have the stamina, you can checkin and out of the same hotel to accumulate more SPG free weekend nights. However there’s a catch. SPG and most other hotels would not give you credit for a stay if you checkin on consecutive nights at a single property. This means you cannot checkin at the San Francisco St. Francis on Monday night, check out on Tuesday morning and re-checkin Tuesday night. SPG will only award you two nights and one stay in the scenario described above.

So if you want to maximize your free weekend nights, we recommend you checkin and out of different SPG properties throughout the week — that’s if you have the stamina to do it 😉