The Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) American Express card is one of my favorite credit cards because of the many great uses for SPG points. For a limited time, American Express has increased the sign up bonus on both the personal and business versions of this card to 35,000 points. The normal sign up bonus is 25,000 points, so this represents a significant increase in value and is something that you should consider taking advantage of. In fact, just a few days ago I applied and got accepted for the Business version of this card–discussed below.

I wrote about this card last year when the bonus was temporarily increased to 35,000 points, here. Hopefully some readers have already taken advantage of the great value that this card’s bonus offers. To quickly re-cap:

Why do you want SPG points?

SPG is the loyalty program for the Starwood Hotels group which includes 11 different brands: St. Regis, The Luxury Collection, W Hotels, Design Hotels, Sheraton, Westin, Le Meridien, Tribute, Four Points by Sheraton, Aloft, and Element by Westin. While you may not necessarily be familiar with all of these brands, they included some of the nicest and most luxurious hotels in the world. SPG hotels are currently in 100 countries and they advertise that they own over 1,200 properties.

For example, I stayed in Le Meridien, in Siem Riep right outside of Angkor Wat last year for only 3000 SPG points, a terrific value for a very nice hotel!

Another great option is the Phoenician in Scottsdale, AZ. I considered staying here for an upcoming trip to Phoenix in March. Rooms were selling for $759 per night but were available for just 25,000 SPG Starpoints–about 3 cents value for each Starpoint!

SPG points are one of the most flexible award points, as they are transferrable to 30 different airline partners and also redeemable for SPG moments, which allow members to gain VIP access to exclusive events.

Additionally, since the Marriott and SPG merger, SPG points are transferrable to Marriott at a 3:1 ratio. Which means that if you transferred all 35,000 SPG points direct to Marriott you would have 105,000 Marriott points–better than any Marriott credit card sign up bonus ever!

There are several great airline transfer options. In almost all cases (there are 4 exceptions) SPG points convert to airline points at a 1:1 ratio. That means that one Starpoint can be equal to one Alaska Airline Point, for example. However, if you redeem in 20,000 point intervals, you will get 5,000 bonus miles for each transfer. Thus, if you transfer 20,000 Starpoints to Alaska, you actually end up with 25,000 Alaska Miles. I wrote about how I maximized this transfer opportunity in this article: Booking Emirates First Class with 90,000 miles and $0 out of pocket.

You can also use SPG points to book Cathay Pacific flights after transferring your points to Alaska Airlines and experience another one of the best First or business Class products out there–which I reviewed here. Or you can transfer points to American Airlines to book One World partners, or several other great options. My point is–these points offer fantastic flexibility!

Enjoying First Class on Cathay Pacific

Hopefully I made the case for why you want to get SPG points. They offer a great value on many redemptions and with this increased sign up bonus you can really take advantage of some of the more high value transfer options.

How I applied for the Business version of the SPG AMEX

I have had the personal version of the SPG AMEX for a couple of years now, and put a decent amount of annual spend on the card in order to earn Starpoints. In fact, last year I met the $30,000 per year spend threshold that unlocks automatic SPG Gold Status (which is easily matched to Marriott Gold, now that SPG and Marriott have merged). I plan on keeping the personal version of this card for the foreseeable future, but wanted to take advantage of this increased bonus offer. Thus, I applied for the business version.

Sign up for the business card here:

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/credit-cards/starwood-business-credit-card

The application process was very straight forward. Since I do not have a formal company at this time, I used my personal Social Security Number and the application asked a few questions about my business. I provided them the name, The Mile Addict, and the industry. They asked what my annual business income was and what I intended to spend on the card each month. The bottom line here is that you do not have to have a profitable business to get a business card. Even people who are just starting a side business with zero or negative profits can be approved for a business card. Also, you do not need a “formal” business (corporation, LLC, etc). You can simply state your business is a sole proprietorship. Quite honestly almost anything can be classified as a business from operating a small blog on the internet to selling merchandise or eBay or Etsy.

I clicked submit and I was instantly approved. To earn the bonus, however, the requirements are slightly higher than the personal card. I will earn 25,000 bonus Starpoints after I use the card to make $5,000 in purchases within the first 3 months and an extra 10,000 bonus Starpoints after I make an additional $3,000 in purchases within the first 6 months. Basically, all my normal monthly spending will be going onto this card for the next several months. The $95 annual fee is waived the first year and extra employee cards are at no cost and no annual fee ever.

For the personal card you will earn 25,000 Starpoints after spending $3,000 on the card in the first 3 months and then 10,000 more Starpoints after spending an additional $2,000 within the first 6 months. The $95 annual fee is waived the first year.

Sign up for the personal card here:

https://www.americanexpress.com/us/credit-cards/card/starwood-preferred-guest/

Conclusion

This is a limited time offer, so I wouldn’t wait to long to apply if you are considering it. The benefits of having SPG points are really quite exceptional. There are just so many uses for the points–and they are one of the most valuable point currencies. If you have any questions about the SPG AMEX card or the many uses for the points, please send me an email or leave a comment below.