Last week, I wrote about the nice promo bonus that American Airlines has for transfer of points from the SPG program. In addition to the normal 5,000 mile bonus on 20,000 points transferred to an airline, for a limited time, you will also receive a 20% bonus on the transferred miles. That means, if you transfer 20,000 SPG points, you will receive a total of 30,000 American Airline miles!
Using Nights & Flights For More Value From The SPG Bonus Transfer To AA
While that is a good value by itself, there is another little way that you can make use of this transfer using a program by SPG to get even more value while you are at it. It is to take advantage of SPG’s Nights & Flights packages.
SPG Nights & Flights is where you are able to use one of two specified block of points to get flights and hotels. It is a nice way to swing a vacation package with just one set of award points. In this case, SPG is mixing two different bonus programs that they have plus throwing in another bonus to sweeten this deal. The bonuses used by these packages are: the 20,000 point transfer (which earns an additional 5,000 miles when transferred) x2 and the stay 5 award nights and get the last one for free.
Category 3 and 4 Hotels
The Westin Cape Coral Resort – a Category 4 hotel
The Nights & Flights packages are available for two hotel categories. What you get with each is 5 nights in that specific hotel category (there must be award availability when you book the package) and 50,000 miles to your favorite 1:1 transfer partner airline. In this case, we are looking at American Airlines.
The Category 3 option costs 60,000 Starpoints (a savings of 8,000 points over booking the hotel and transferring the miles apart from the package) and the Category 4 option costs 70,000 Starpoints (a savings of 10,000 points over booking the hotel and transferring the miles apart from the package). That is a nice deal to get 50,000 miles and 5 nights at a hotel!
But, with this transfer promo, it gets even better! Since you do not actually book your flights when you book the package (the agent simply initiates the transfer), this transfer of 50,000 miles goes to AA like any other transfer. When it does, you will get the 20% transfer bonus on top of the miles for a total of 10,000 more miles! Thanks to this transfer promo and the Nights & Flights package, you could get 5 nights at a Category 4 hotel plus 60,000 American Airline miles for only 70,000 Starpoints! Big savings for sure.
To book such a package, you must do it over the phone. They will reserve your hotel booking and initiate the transfer to American Airlines. The number to call is 800 353 12030 for non-elites.
Not sure what a category 4 is like? Check out my review of the fantastic Westin Cape Coral Resort that you can book with this package!
Don’t Want The Hotel After All?
What if you do not want to book the hotel right now? No problem, you book one now for the package but then you can cancel it later (within the cancellation rules) and receive back 20,000 Starpoints for the Category 3 booking and 30,000 points for the Category 4. That means you will lose the advantage of having an additional point savings by using the Nights & Flights booking but at least you will still have your AA miles as if you transferred them the regular way.
Remember – you do not actually have to use the AA miles that you get from this for the same trip nor do you need to book them right away. The 60,000 miles can sit there however long you want without using it to coincide with the hotel booking. It is just a nice way to take advantage of a few thousand more points in savings if you have the points to swing it.
If you want an Amex SPG business card – 25,000 Starpoints after spending $3,000 in 3 months – I can send you a referral for it. I will get some bonus points as well, thank you! Just be aware that there most likely will be a 30,000 bonus at some point soon!
