One of the great things about the Starwood Preferred Guest program is that you can use your SPG points to confirm suites in advance.
This is great if you’re traveling with your family or a larger group and want to have some extra room to spread out.
Per the SPG site, you can arrange for an upgrade within five days of arrival to a Specialty, Specialty Select Room, or Suite on reservations booked at RACK, COR, SET, or BAR. You may upgrade from any category of room with a Free Night Award or a paid reservation.
The price of the suite upgrade depends on the hotel category and is per night:
- Category 1 property: 3,000 points
- Category 2 property: 4,o00 points
- Category 3 property: 7,000 points
- Category 4 property: 10,000 points
- Category 5 property: 12,000-16,000 points
- Category 6 property: 20,000-25,000 points
- Category 7 property: 30,000-35,000 points
The first step is to book a standard room at the hotel on a paid rate or using points.
For instance for my example I’m going to take a look at the Sheraton Norfolk Waterside Hotel, which is a Category 2 property.
Rooms here start at $99 for the cheapest room, whereas a suite starts at $259 per night.
So take take advantage of this you could book the room for $99 and then use 4,000 SPG points to upgrade to the suite.
You would be saving $159 by using the 4,000 points giving you a 3.975 cents per Starpoint value which isn’t too bad of a redemption.
Bottom Line
Using Starpoints to upgrade either paid rooms or award reservations to suites can be a good deal. Be sure to look at the number of points needed and make sure you get a decent Starpoint redemption.
Remember the higher the hotel category, the more Starpoints you’ll need to upgrade to a suite, so it may make sense to use this option more at lower Category hotels.
Also in order to upgrade to a suite with Starpoints, you must do it over the phone as the website does not support this feature yet.
Have you ever used SPG points to upgrade to a suite in advance?
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I used a 25% off gold award for a stay and was told I’d have to cancel the reservation and rebook at full points to upgrade. Would this work on that scenario without rebooking?
What made it more complicated was that it was only 2k more points for a junior suite in a cat 5 hotel. Would that be the same or would I have to pay the whole 12k for the upgrade using this method?