Through July 31 there’s a 20% bonus for transferring Starwood points into American miles.
From July 1 through July 31, 2014, simply convert your Starpoints® to American Airlines AAdvantage miles and earn a 20% bonus. As always, for every 20,000 Starpoints transferred within the same transaction, SPG® will automatically add another 5,000 miles. With the additional 20% mileage bonus offered by the AAdvantage program, you will receive a total of 30,000 miles from the transaction.
Starwood can post up to 79,999 points to a given airline mileage program during a 24 hour period. And of course you want to transfer in chunks of 20,000 to maximize your bonus.
So don’t transfer more than 60,000 Starpoints (which will yield 90,000 American miles) in a 24 hour period. If you want to make a larger transfer, break it up across more than one day.
Starpoint transfers are not ‘live’ and do not post instantly. In my experience they’ve sped up, however, such that it is generally possible to put an award on a 5 day hold with American AAdvantage, transfer the points, and have those points arrive in your account in time to issue the tickets. That didn’t used to reliably be the case, but I’m glad that it has consistently been so for me over the past couple of years.
There does not appear to be any limit to this bonus offer, outside of the theoretical limit to the number of points you can transfer in a 24 hour period and the number of days left before July ends.
(HT: murtuza in the comments)
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Hmm…that or another Citi AAdvantage card to put me over 300k miles…?
Devaluation in 3….2…..1…..
I think this is a terrible offer…..Starwood too hard and AA too easy to get to make this a reasonable proposition………
Thanks for posting this!
I’m guessing that AA/US will be having a devaluation sometime in the coming months, and certainly by early next year–since they can do so to compete with the devaluations by UA and DL. So if you transfer SPG points to AA miles and can redeem them for awards in the coming few months, this is likely a pretty good deal. If not, then I suspect the extra 5% you earn will be lost amidst the devaluation that is certainly coming.
Horrible for me! Just transferred 80k starpoints to AA three days ago.
Will this work with SPG Flight and Points.
I wonder the same, does this apply to SPG flight and points?
Seems like it’s triggered by transfers to American, and would include points transferred as part of ‘nights and flights’ awards.
I know we are worried about the AA devaluation and that the 30K AA miles will be worth less than they are today, but if you don’t take advantage of this offer and need AA miles in future, you will get 25K devalued AA miles with a transfer. Not converting spg points to AA miles at all is fine But if you do use the AA miles for award travel, then the current conversion gives a better rate, regardless of the anticipated devaluation. OR am I all wet?
Nights and Flights is one of the great deals out there. I wish that had it for Cat 6 and 7 properties also. Devaluations are a way of life. The only thing is being flexible where/when you travel and having good transfer partners may help going forward. I wonder at some point if the blowkback causes a falloff in the airline credit cards and dollars generated for them. For most people outside of this community, they are looking primarily for domestic coach tickets.
I wouldn’t trade 25,000 Starwood points for 50,000 AA miles.
I used to think that folks who converted their SPG points into airline miles were foolish. But now I’m not so sure. The devaluation of the “cash & points” program made SPG points less useful to me, and now most of their “interesting” properties are in categories that require too many points. Also, when I stay at Starwood properties as a Gold, I don’t get any really useful perks (like HHonors throws in breakfast). I know some folks like their fancy pants USA locations but, honestly, I have little use for their expensive urban USA locations. In Europe, I now tend to redeem with ClubCarlson, because their 2 for 1 deal is a much better deal. That leaves Asia, where they’re still probably the most useful chain. But if you’re not headed to Asia, you might do better with the AA miles. Personal preference, I guess.
After I made the transfer, I received an email from Starwood saying I was now unregistered for DL Crossover Rewards. I didn’t see any spot or term where I elected to unregister.
I was able to re-register at least.
Hmm.
Scary to see this. Nothing to celebrate here. Hopefully the inevitable devaluation won’t turn AA points into pesos.
About 5 day holds on AA, is it true that if your itin has an IB segment, you can only hold it for 24 hours?
@Mike that is true
@iahphx – I believe the best use of SPG points is airline miles redemptions, but I have so many miles I rarely do that.
Got an e-mail for US as well. Same 20% bonus.
@Gary — It’s interesting because SPG was such a loyalty program pioneer and they’ve always seem to run their program well. But if we’re not excited to redeem points to stay at their hotels — and their brand seems kind of niche anyway — it seems like there needs to be a “reinvention” over there.
To me it’s more about the relative value of miles (though the best SPG hotels aren’t necessarily a value on points much of the time especially at the top end)