How To Maximize Starwood Points Transfers to Airlines
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Starwood Points, or Starpoints that can be earned through the Starwood Hotel’s Preferred Guest Program are a very valuable and flexible award currency for travelers. Not only can the points be used to earn free hotel nights—similar to most other hotel programs—Starwood points can also be transferred to more than 30 airline partners.
That means for every point you earn in the SPG program, you’re essentially earning the value of at least 1 point in your favorite airline’s mileage program. And if this wasn’t enough good news, Starwood also offers a great transfer bonus to its members. For every 20,000 Starwood points you transfer to any partner airline in a single transaction, you’ll receive a 25% mileage bonus—that’s 5,000 extra miles for every 20,000 SPG points transferred to miles.
A current offer from our partner American Express, for example, has a bonus of 25,000 points for new card members who apply for the the Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card and complete a minimum spend of $3,000 in the first 3 months of card membership. These 25,000 SPG points can be redeemed at any Starwood hotel property worldwide—or, they could be transferred into 30,000 miles with any of SPG’s 1:1 airline mile transfer partners.
Check out these current offers from our partner American Express:
-> Starwood Preferred Guest Credit Card – Get 25,000 SPG points after spending $3,000 in 3 months of car membership.
-> Starwood Preferred Guest Business Credit Card – Get 25,000 SPG points after spending $5,000 in the first 3 months of card membership.
With Starwood’s generous 25% transfer bonus, you can often earn more miles by using the SPG credit card and transferring the points to your favorite airline than you would by using an airline co-branded credit card that earns 1x point per dollar and gives you points directly to your airline’s mileage program.
The Big List of SPG Airline Transfer Partners
The Starwood Preferred Guest program has more than 30 airline mileage transfer partners. For best results and value, you’ll want to make sure you’re transferring to a 1:1 program (that’s 1 SPG point to 1 partner airline mile).
See the most up-to-date list by logging into your Starwood account at SPG.com and viewing the transfer partner list under Redeem/Travel/Transfer-To-AirMiles.
How to Transfer SPG Points to Mileage Partners
It’s simple to transfer your Starwood points to airline miles. All you’ll need is an Internet connection and your account information for both your SPG account and the airline mileage program to which you want to transfer.
- Log into your Starwood Preferred Guest account at SPG.com
- From the toolbar select Redeem
- On the Redeem page, select the Travel option
- Scroll down the Travel page and choose the Transfer to Air Miles option
5. Find your mileage program partner on the transfer list. Click Transfer to Air Miles and complete the form with your SPG account information, your partner airline account information, and the number of points you wish to transfer. The minimum number of points you can transfer is based on your SPG status (see rules below).
- Wait—sometimes up to a week—and the miles will appear directly in your airline mileage account.
A Few Transfer Rules & Other Things to Note
Matching Account Names: The name on your SPG account must match the name on the mileage account to which you are transferring your points.
SPG Allows Family Transfers: Starwood allows you to move your points to the account of a family member with the same street address. If you want to put your SPG miles into your partner’s airline mileage account, first move them to your partner’s SPG account, then complete the mileage transfer.
Maximum Transfers in 24 Hours: SPG allows you to transfer a maximum of 79,999 SPG points to airline partners within a 24 hour period. (If you want to maximize the transfer bonus though, you should never move more than 60,000 in a day—as the bonus points are awarded for 20,000 point transfers.) Also, you can only make one transfer per member to any single airline mileage program in any 24 hour period. (i.e. you transferred points to Alaska today, but realize you need to transfer more—you’ll have to wait 24 hours).
Transfer Minimums: The minimum number of SPG points you can transfer to a mileage program is based on your Starwood Preferred Guest Status:
- SPG Platinum: No minimum transfer
- SPG Gold: 1,500 point minimum transfer
- SPG with no elite status:2,500 point minimum transfer
Transaction Time: Transfers made from SPG to airline programs are not instantaneous. The amount of time will vary based on the mileage program to which you transfer. It is wise to plan 5-7 days for the transfer to complete, however some miles will post faster.
It’s as easy as 1…2…Now boarding Zone 3.
Apply for the Starwood Preferred Guest Card from American Express or the Starwood Preferred Guest Business Card from American Express and start turning those bonus points into airline miles!
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