Regular as clockwork, American Express has brought back its special November promotion on the Starwood Preferred Guest American Express credit card.
This card usually comes with 10,000 SPG points as a sign-up bonus. For now, though, it is offering 20,000 SPG points – click here for full details from the Amex website.
20,000 SPG points is a good deal if you redeem for hotel stays at Sheraton, Westin, W, St Regis, Luxury Collection etc. Read this post from last month to see how I got £370 of value when I cashed in the 20,000 SPG points I got when they ran this promotion last year.
You can also convert 20,000 SPG points into airline miles. The great news here is that 20,000 is the trigger required to get a 5,000 mile bonus. Whilst 10,000 SPG only gets you 10,000 airline miles, when you convert 20,000 you get 20,000 airline miles plus 5,000 extra!
Your 20,000 SPG points would therefore get you 25,000 airline miles! You can convert to Avios, of course, but also to a lot of other airlines – click here for the full list. There are over 30 airline partners in total.
Now, here are the facts on the card:
- There is a £75 annual fee
- The fee will be refunded pro-rata when you cancel the card
- There are NO restrictions on getting the bonus if you have other Amex cards – anyone can apply
- There is a £30,000 household income requirement
- You need to spend £1,000 in 3 months to trigger the bonus
If you don’t qualify for the current Amex Gold promotion (30,000 Membership Rewards points) then this deal is very much worth a look. If you have applied for the Amex Gold this week, though, I would give this a miss. Amex won’t like you applying for two cards in as many days, and this SPG offer will be back next year I’m sure.
It is especially valuable if you want to generate some miles in one of the airline partner programmes apart from Avios. There aren’t that many easy ways to earn, for example, 25,000 Miles & More, American Airlines or Aeroplan miles from the UK.
(To see our complete list of all current credit card bonuses, click here to visit our ‘Credit Cards Update’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
Is there any restriction if you held the card in the past?
IIRC you need to have closed the previous a/c more than six months ago. It’s certainly dropped off my list of cards now in my a/c and they let me re-apply
Thanks raffles, this is excellent, my plan is starting to come together
Thanks again Raffles. My mother has never had so many cards 🙂
As the conversion rate from Amex Reward points appears to favour Avios over Starwood points and there is a direct route from Starwood points to Avios, I was wondering if Starwood rewards have more generous bonuses ever?
More generally, I was also wondering if you could share your experience and wisdom to predict the frequency and timing of conversion bonuses between schemes but especially to Avios?
Starwood itself does not run conversion bonuses into the airline schemes over and above the usual 20k SPG = 25k miles.
However … once a year, BA normally a runs its own promotion offering you a 25% bonus when you convert hotel points into Avios. The last time it ran was April 18 to June 20 2012, when you got a 25% bonus on Hilton, Marriott, IHG, Rezidor, Starwood, Hyatt, Shangri-la and Accor transfers. It tends to come back once every 12-18 months. Under this promo, 20k SPG would be 31,250 Avios, ie the usual 20k SPG = 25k Avios + 25% bonus = 31,250 Avios.
Bonuses from Amex Membership Rewards to Avios are harder to predict. Something seems to happen every 9-12 months or so, but recently Amex has been randomly targetting people to take part, so you can’t guarantee you can join in even if another one does come along.
It says you’re not eligible for the sign-up bonus if you hold or have held an ‘avios enrolled amex card’ in the last six months. What counts as avios enrolled?
That sounds suspiciously to me like someone at Amex has done some copying-and-pasting from BA Amex T&Cs… 😛 I think as long as you’ve not held the SPG card in the past six months you should be fine.
Agreed. The Amex website only says this in the ‘Important Information’ box where the rules are always listed:
“1.You will receive 20,000 bonus Starpoints when you spend and charge £1,000 within the first three months of Cardmembership. Please note that it can take up to two months for bonus Starpoints to be awarded to your account. Please see complete information on complimentary nights by visiting spg.com.”
Makes sense. I thought it was a bit strange that they would mention adios specifically.
Not tracked here either – you can put a claim in after a few days but need your card number (I’m still waiting for my physical card to arrive)
Yes, spotted that. I wrote a post but there is so much going on this week it keeps getting pushed back – I don’t want to exceed 3 posts a day!
The more of your posts the better IMHO!
Reading on the blog it doesn’t really matter, I agree. More than 3 a day would be a bit spammy for email, RSS, Facebook and Twitter subscribers, though – especially email subscribers, as each post is sent separately.
Ahh I read on RSS and it makes a nice change from all the US focused blogs that seem to churn out hundreds of posts!
A.