Triangle Trip

Following up on my last article, SPG is finally showing free weekend nights awards online at spg.com (you have three more days to earn another free night which can be redeemed before the end of September 30, 2009).

To check your SPG free weekend nights status, login to SPG’s website, select account information, than under Starpoints@ Awards, click “My Earned Award” link.

The My Earned Award page should show you the number of free weekend night awards.  Reminder, they expire end of September and are running out of rooms fast.  Use them or lose them.

Quick update: I just booked a category 5 hotel for labor day weekend.  The process took a little bit since everyone is saving their awards for the last minute august/september travel.  The spg operator has to search date by date for the hotel of choice.  I had the operator search through each weekend in september for numerous hotels until we luckily found one.  Book quick for the higher category hotels.

Following up on previous post regarding how to check status, SPG has responded with email notifications.

Previously, the only way to find out the number of free weekends awarded was to call SPG’s award winning customer service.  The e-mail I finally received was a pleasant surprise.  Another reason to bank at Starwood (more reasons why hotel points are more valuable than airline miles), they respond to demand and answer!

I was recently redeemed my free SPG weekend nights (here’s the link to Big A‘s post on how to redeem your free SPG weekend nights) and want to let everyone know that the process was extremely smooth even thought I encountered a few hiccups along the way. Here’s my experience:

I rang Starwood’s customer service line to redeem my free weekend nights plus a five-night point redemption reservation, but found out that I was not properly enrolled. The customer service representative knew I was in a hurry and split my reservation into two reservations:  one for the free SPG weekend nights redemption and another for my SPG points redemption. The customer service representative also reassured me that he would make sure my free SPG weekend nights enrollment would be retroactive.

At the Sheraton front desk of my destination, I was greeted with a pleasant surprise:

1.  My SPG free weekend nights were made retroactive

2.  The Sheraton hotel (Category 6) I booked allowed me to redeem 4 nights using my SPG points, and gave me the 5th night for free

3.  I also got my Platinum choice award (I opted for the 500 bonus points of course)

In summary, Starwood’s worldclass service should be held as the standard for the travel industry. The US airline industry should look to Starwood for some guidance.

This is why hotel points are much better than airline miles — here’s a link to my previous post.