What the heck?

And I highly recommend everyone to follow your advice. Don't stay at a hotel for the sake of miles and points only if you singificantly prefer another property with lesser or no points/miles a lot more. You are probably referring to my spreadsheet in the SPG forum, it wasn't intented as bashing the value of SPG as a program. On the contrary, I really like SPG, both the program features and its hotels. Without SPG, I wouldn't have a default FF currency to trade with people on FT with a sensibly stable benchmark. Also, numbers usually fail to translate the non-quantifiable factors such as usage and the pleasure/satisfaction gained from those. Just because you can't see it doesn't mean they don't have value!

To the OP, the good thing about SPG is you can transfer your points to miles when the need arises. Put it simply, there is not a single best FFP to pair with SPG because each FFP has their strengths and weaknesses. Someone mentioned CX Asia Miles as a good redemption opportunity for Business class tickets to Europe but if you want to fly BA F on the same trip, it would be best to use Japan Airlines MLB, which is cheaper than both CX and BA for instance requiring only 100K miles. So it really depends on what your needs are and where you want to go. If you transfer all your points to AA and yet suddenly, you want to take your family on a summer trip to the world famous Anne's Green Gable in the beautiful Prince Edward Island on Canada's Atlantic coast, you are out of luck.

Hence, the best strategy re: SPG and Airline FFP IMO is to save your points as SPG point and transfer them to miles once you decide where you want to go and which FFP best serves your need.

I am in the same boat, former SPG Platinum, don't miss it a bit. SPG Gold status works just fine since many properties still think I am SPG Platinum anyway. Starwood Lurker explained to me that for some reasons hotels don't always update the guest status and many still had my old status and I even get those Platinum amenity on check-in, which I have wisely learned to choose soemthing other than the 500 SPG bonus points because they don't post given I am a fake Platinum. If a hotel insists that I am a SPG Platinum to them, I am not going to tell them they are wrong. So I'd pick say a bottle of champagne and take it with me instead. Seriously, SPG Gold isn't so bad. If you learned how to score upgrades, it doesn't matter that much whether you are Gold or Platinum. But then I don't stay at SPG as often as I used to so maybe that's why the few times that I do stay with them and could prepare in advance, I usually get very good upgrade results, including being pre-booked into an Executive Floor Tower room with lounge access on a C&P for a 4 nights stay during a sold out major sporting event. To me, SPG Platinum offered very little additional values at this point and the opportunity cost of getting the status at the expense of my stays with Hilton HHonors is too great which give LOTS of points and miles.

Agreed on all counts, HH Gold is treated as good as SPG Platinum in many hotels although if you are HH Diamond, you do get a little more consideration. Here are two real cases for you. I was in Conard Istanbul last year and was HH Gold at the time. Got upgraded to the Concierge floor at check-in but I had to convince them I deserved the ugprade and the free lounge access. The check-in agent sort of viewed Gold as a yes but status. The roof top lounge at the Conrad had a superb view of Istanbul and the hotel was really, really nice. Then, we decided we don't want to eat our breakfast in the lounge, instead we wanted to try the buffet in the lobby instead. I went back down to the front desk, same agent but I don't think he remembers me b/c it was the next day. At first, he was giving me this song and dance and making it difficult. But for some bizarre reason, he checked his computer and suddenly he saw I am a "Diamond" which I seriously had no idea where he got that from. His attitude changed immediately and promptly handed over two breakfast vouchers. I kid you not, this is real. Then, I bought a phone card from the hotel giftshop and it was dead within minutes which was bizarre . It turned out, the price and the actual value of the card is like 5:1. I didn't read Turkish but I went to the phone company website anyway and had the Concierge floor attendant came over to check my suspicion and I was correct. The attendant called a hotel manager, she apologized profusely, took the charge off from my hotel room bill, about $20 and from the rest of stay, took care of me and made a point of checking with me. Upon checking out, she even came over to ask when I'll be coming back. After I got home, I even got an e-mail from the hotel's GM.

Another case involved a SPG hotel, this time Vancouver Wall Center Sheraton, an excellent SPG hotel and one of the best Sheraton in North America. I am SPG Gold, booked a room on C&P and got upgraded to the Tower Floor with lounge access. This hotel has one of the best lounge you can find among North American Sheratons, it has an amazing dinner service. There are several hot and cold items, much better than the food on most domestic First class, comparable to international business class. So I asked for a late check-out, but instead of 4PM, I need 5PM. I know it's a special request so the front desk transferred me to a manager since it's later than usual. The manager was quick to say yes, then correct herself 2 seconds later. At first, she was quick to say yes because she thought I was a SPG Platinum. This hotel has superb service as well and you can see they go out their way to accomodate SPG Platinum. She was polite and did not make a fuss that I was only Gold but she was insistant that she can only do 4PM but may consider extending to 5PM if I would be willing to check again later, which I can't. It does show however that SPG Platinum do get some more consideration than SPG Gold even though theoretically, the late check-out policy should be identical for both SPG Gold and Platinum.


Also, Hilton HHonors offers airlines partners that are not found in the SPG program, notably Qantas and British Midland for instance. SPG is slightly weaker when it comes to redemption opportunities within Star Alliance due to BD not part of SPG and UA's Star Net filtering. But this is small inconvenience compared to its overall flexibility, which is still by far the best in terms of transferring hotel points to miles.

Just transfer Starpoints to US Airways and do Star Alliance redemptions through them. No need to transfer to BD (not an option) or UA (with a 2:1 ratio). Use ANA to research the Star Alliance flights.

I'm with you - I think the St. Regis --> American pairing is way off.


And we forgot Doubletree --> Airtran.

The US Airways option is a rather poor alternative. For one thing, it doesn't have a one-way award option. Plus, US miles have very restrictive rules on stopover and connections, not to mention a lot of booking related fees. When you book too close to departure date, they charge very hefty fees to use your miles. And for the most common awards, which is travel within North America and Carribbean/Mexico, US charges 50/60K miles for First/Business class. Whereas with BD, you can get the same thing for as little as 11K miles + about $120 cash. With fuel surcharges being eliminated or reduced across most *A carriers, the advantage of BD over US is even more glaring because the former doesn't charge booking fees although some FTers would aruge they need to be paid for having to call the BD ICC.

If I want to travel from east cost to east asia, would AA be the best one?

Where in Asia and in what class of travel? AA has been consistently tweaking their defintion of Far East Asia to very limited number of places now. This is a sneaky way to increase award cost. Given you can generate AA miles simply by churning Citi AA CC cards, I don't know if one should ever transfer SPG points to AA. It is possible that US or AC will give you better redemption value than AA for travel from east coast USA to Asia.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with both US and UA today booking a mix of UA, LH, and MS segments.

In the end, I got everything I needed from UA - albeit on the 3rd call. The US agents were filtering me harder than the UA ones were!

I'm beginning to think seriously about a second Star Alliance account to which I redirect partner activity - a non-U.S. airline. BD seems like a popular one with lots of partners. Might give the Asiana idea a bit more thought as well.

If you have a Starwood account and registered with www.spg.com, you can check it out to see what airlines give you the best conversions. I transfer spg points to the airlines I fly teh most and gives the 1:1 ratio.