Starwood’s Winter Promotion Is Out. It’s Weak. You Should Register Anyway.

by Gary Leff

Starwood’s winter promotion is out and it’s pretty weak sauce. Registration required.

Between January 11 and April 30 you can earn double points of stays 2 nights or longer, and you can earn 250 points “in popular destinations.” Here are the participating hotels for the 250 point bonus (which is per night and doesn’t require a two night stay).

For the winter Starwood offered double points plus 500 points for stays of 3 nights or more.


Lobby of the W Union Square

For winter the promotion is substantially weaker (which is surprising) — it takes a 2 night stay to earn double points rather than applying to all stays, and the ‘kicker’ is only 250 points a night but crucially only at participating hotels (but without the minimum stay length requirement).


Spa at the Andaman

I love Starwood points but I’m not going to make any extra effort for double points nor for 250 extra points. Call that kicker $6 per night, it’s unfortunate that by my count the program could only get 258 hotels (or just over 20% of Starwood properties) to opt into that. (And seems like something so modest could have been funded at the program level.)

Register anyway, of course, because earning double points if you happen to stay 2 nights at a Starwood hotel during the promotion period — or at a 250 bonus point participating hotel — is better than not earning those points.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Double points in many hotel chains would be a good-to-great bonus, but the trouble is that Starwood’s regular point-earning is so lame! Come on, a measly 2 points per $ ?! Which becomes 4 under this promo, or 5 for Golds.

  2. It appears that double points will be available at all SPG locations worldwide, which for me, is an improvement over the SPG Stay for More promotion currently offered.

  3. IHG 2016 Accelerate promo is out now too. I think I will stick with that:
    6K after 1 night in January
    10K after 5 nights
    5K after 3 night stay in NYC
    1.5K for using my IHG CC
    27.5K bonus for 3/4

  5. Actually, the kicker is a little bit better, even with the limited property participation. It is 250 points per night, not per stay. If you happen to be in any of those “popular” destinations, you’ll earn a lot more from the kicker compared to the Fall promo.

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