Starwood Mystery Point Bonus- up to 50% off Starpoints

Starpoints are one of the most valuable points currencies out there because of the great redemption opportunities that exist. What’s more, they’re very hard for us Singapore-based travellers to earn. The only credit card route we have to earn Starpoints in Singapore is through American Express, at a really crappy ratio.

So whenever Starwood announces a sale on points, I get interested. This time round they’re offering a mystery bonus of up to 50% on points purchased before 31 Dec 2016.

Note that the wording is up to 50%. From what I understand, there are 4 offers available. Starpoints regularly retail at 3.5 cents per point, so depending on what offer you get you will be paying-

• 25% off — 2.625 cents per Starpoint
• 30% off — 2.45 cents per Starpoint
• 35% off — 2.275 cents per Starpoint
• 50% off — 1.75 cents per Starpoint

Guess what offer I got?

Pfffft. 78 nights this year and on track to hit 100, and I get 25%. Why do the ones we love hurt us the most?

If you got the 50% deal, I would advise you to absolutely buy the maximum number of points you can. 1.75 cents per Starpoint is a ridiculously good deal, given that you can typically get upwards of 2 cents per Starpoint value on hotel redemptions

Remember that you don’t just need to use Starpoints for hotels though, they can also be transferred to most airline FFPs (including Krisflyer) at a 1:1 ratio. What’s more, for every 20,000 Starpoints you transfer, you get a 5,000 miles, so that’s a 1:1.25 ratio.

The full list of airline partners is here.

If you were to max out a 50% discount, you could essentially buy airline miles on any 1:1 partner for 1.4 US cents, which is very, very cheap.

For Singapore based flyers, this might present an opportunity to redeem some exotic cabin products that would normally be very difficult. For example, you could conceivably transfer to American Airlines or Etihad to book the Etihad First Class Apartment on the A380

Alternatively, you could convert Starpoints into Japan Airlines miles and use those to redeem Emirates First Class awards. This seems to be the only reasonable way to get them, now that Alaska has devalued their redemption rates.

What happens if you get the 30% or 35% offers? I’m a bit more indifferent about these. At 35% I might bite, if I had a confirmed redemption in mind and wasn’t just buying speculatively. Probably not at 30%, because there have been publicly available 30% sales before that anyone could take advantage of.

Anyway it’s a moot point for me because I’m definitely not biting at a 25% sale. The good news for those of you on the fence is that you have until the end of the year to decide, so there’s no need to rush to buy now.

A couple of people have asked me if there’s any chance Starwood will launch a cobranded card in Singapore. My answer to that is a flat no. The market here is just too small to make such an effort worthwhile. The best we can hope for is one of our banks adds Starwood as a transfer partner with a reasonable points exchange rate.