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Buy StarPoints at a 25% Discount – Worth It?

Hope to Stay at the Swan/Dolphin on this trip

Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) is offering a deal on purchased Starpoints of up to 25% now through May 31st. Starpoints are my favorite points currency, I value them easily at over $0.02 per point easily with many times being able to squeeze over $0.03 in value out of each point.

With this promo currently running is it worth purchasing points to redeem for your upcoming hotel stays or transfer to airline partners?

The promotion is setup in a tiered approach, to get the full 25% off you’ll need to purchase the maximum amount of 20,000 points.

Discount Tiers
• Get 10% off 500–9,500 Starpoints
• Get 15% off 10,000–14,500 Starpoints
• Get 20% off 15,000–19,500 Starpoints
• Get 25% off 20,000 Starpoints
Discount SPG Starpoints
Purchasing 20,000 Starpoints at full price would normally cost $700 or 3.5 cents/point. If you were to purchase the maximum 20,000 with the 25% discount the price would come down to $525 or 2.625 cents/point.

$525 is still a large amount of money so is there a situation where it would be worth it to purchase 20,000 points for either a hotel stay or to transfer for a flight?

We’ll use the Swan and Dolphin as examples to see if it’s worth purchasing points to redeem for nights to see if we can come out ahead.

Both the Swan and Dolphin require 10,000 points/night for a free night or 5,000 points + $75 for a cash and points award.  On average a night in either the Swan and Dolphin is running between $159-$199/night.

Starpoints swan dolphin

Use Starpoints for Stays at the Swan and Dolphin

With our freshly purchased 20,000 Starpoints we would be able to redeem those for two free nights.  With the rates at a maximum being $199/night we will come out behind about $125 if we were to use this promotion.

To use cash and points we could redeem for 4 nights plus an additional cost of $300.  Adding in our original cost of $525 our total cost would be $825.

If we were to pay full price for the room at $199/night for 4 nights it would run us $800 so we’re still coming in behind by $25.There are situations where it may make sense to purchase Starpoints at this rate, such as airline miles needed for an award flight when cash fares are very expensive.

A nice feature of Starpoints is that you can transfer them to many airlines and get a 5000 point bonus when transferring 20,000 or more points.  Most domestic carriers charge 25,000 miles for a round trip fight in the US which means that us purchasing the 20,000 points for $525 could be used for an award flight because our 20,000 miles will turn into 25,000.

Another instance is if you’re very close to an award redemption and you only need a a couple thousand points to get that redemption, it may make sense to purchase points to top off your account.

Conclusion

Overall it probably is not worth it in many cases to purchase Starpoints even at the discounted rate. Perhaps the only situations I can see it being worth it are if you’re looking to top off your account for an award or a transfer to airline miles.

If you are going to purchase Starpoints for a transfer to an airline be sure to do your homework on award availability and other options to make sure that you’re at a minimum breaking even when purchasing points!

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