50% Bonus on American Express Membership Rewards Transfers to Starwood

by Gary Leff

American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 50% bonus on transfers to Starwood Preferred Guest through March 31.

Normally it takes 3 Membership Rewards points to yield one Starpoint.

Under this offer it takes 2 Membership Rewards points to yield one Starpoints.

So better than usual, and in my view better than other straight-up hotel transfer options that American Express offers. But still not good or in most cases worth doing except to top off to towards a specific award with SPG. (Then, your relevant comparison is the cost to buy Starpoints.)

American Express Membership Rewards are almost always best (1) transferring to airline miles (2) during a bonus promotion (3) for low-level premium cabin award redemptions. The hotel transfer options just aren’t as good.

Alternatively, this does represent an opportunity with some devaluation to transfer points from American Express Membership Rewards to airline programs that Membership Rewards doesn’t partner with. Using this promotion, 40,000 Membership Rewards points become 20,000 Starpoints. Starwood Preferred Guest has a huge range of partners. You could transfer to American AAdvantage for instance, those 20,000 points become 25,000 miles. So 40,000 Amex points to 25,000 AAdvantage miles.

Again, not useful in most circumstances or the best use of Membership Rewards points, but strategically useful for some.

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. This would be valuable if you are transferring smaller amounts of points to top off your SPG account to get it to the next multiple of 20,000 points. For example, if you we’re at 17,000 SPG nots and needed to get to 20,000 which would be 25,000 when transferred. However, if you are not transferring soon then not worth it to top it off.

  3. I actually made a transfer of 5000 Amex points yesterday before this post came up and only 1,665 SPG points posted, not the 2,500 that was supposed to. Yesterday was the 10th this promo began on the 7th so I should have qualified for the 2:1 conversion.

  7. +1 for 3-to-1. I’ve been waiting for this offer to come up, and go so excited with this post.

  10. I can’t see it at all even when I use Chrome Incognito and not logged-in. Gary I think they can track your cookie, do you want to try in Incognito?

  16. What does “American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 50% bonus on transfers to Starwood Preferred Guest through March 31” mean? To me it means the deals good on the 31… Not to Amex … What do you think?

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