Starwood’s Fall promotion is “Better By the Night”:
Between October 1 and December 20, Starwood is offering:
- Double points on eligible stays of 1 or 2 nights
- Triple points on eligible stays of 3 or more nights
In addition, there are online and mobile device booking bonuses:
- 250 bonus points for eligible stays booked at spg.com, through the Blackberry app, or with the W Hotels iPhone app
- 500 bonus points for eligible stays booked through their iPhone app
“Better By the Night” was the name of the promotion that Starwood ran in the first quarter of the year, and included the same double and triple point bonuses. The online and mobile app booking bonuses are new.
More points are better than not more points, but the double and triple points amount to a few hundred extra points on each stay. The booking bonus is bigger, but for it to start adding up you need to have an iPhone.
There’s a pretty big list of non-participating properties — by my count 130 — and that is a pretty big detractor. You have to check the list on the promotions page before you make your booking if you actually expected this to move the needle on your behavior.
It’s nothing like a free stay every three nights, earnable in unlimited quantities and redeemable anywhere, but then no one in the market has anything approaching that. I believe that the Hyatt promotion is marginally better, and without excluding one of every ten properties, but this is competitive with what else is out there and of course it will make sense to register rather than not registering — even if you don’t yet expect to have a Starwood stay during the promotion period (since you never know when one might pop up, and you’re less likely to remember to register at that time).
Registration is required by November 30, but registration is not open yet. I plan to post when it opens. You can also text “BBTN” to 44264 and they’ll send you a text when it opens.
Ultimately it’s worth participating but unlikely worth making stay decisions based on — especially given the work to verify whether a given property participates, compared to the modest bonuses involved — but if you are going to stay at Starwood, definitely pick up the bonus points and book through the most rewarding channel you have access to.
(HT: Mommy Points)
you mention an i phone app
is there an i-pad app?
Okay, downloaded the iPhone app despite all the 1-star reviews claiming it crashes all the time. Seems to work fine, and is relatively well designed.
@jim a,
Appears to just be an iPhone app. It will of course work on your iPad but won’t take advantage of the extra screen real estate, which is unfortunate. Still, if your company’s SET number is in your profile, and you’re booking at one of your preferred hotels, it shouldn’t take that much work to set up a new reservation. Seems like it might be doable without too much screwing around. Probably worth doing for the bonus 250 miles vs. booking on the web.
The FAQs on the promo page say you get the 500 points bonus if you make the reservation on an iPad using the iPhone app. Also the FAQs say you get the bonus based on how you originally made the reservation and that you can modify using another channel. Check out the FAQs.
Because you’re only averaging a few hundred extra points a stay, I’d say the Hyatt promo is more valuable (bias openly disclosed). SPG points are worth more to me than GP points, but the Hyatt bonuses at and above 10 nights (especially with the Hyatt CC) make “better math” to me.