Moderator's Note:
 

Do any booking services assist with SPG bookings?

I am looking to book the St. Regis Maldives and have found Oct 19-29, 2017 10 nights for 468,000 for an overwater villa on SPG Points. My problem is I only have 7000 SPG Points while I have 400K Delta SkyMiles, 400K AA Miles, and 350K Chase Ultimate Rewards. Is there a way to get miles I need? <deleted>

<deleted>.

You can buy SPG points direct from SPG, but they're pricey.
Starwood ordinarily charges 3.5 cents per purchased Starpoint (they just ended a sale on 4/30/17)

https://thepointsguy.com/2014/08/can...arwood-points/

AFAIK, you can't convert Delta/AA miles to SPG directly. Possibly through some roundabout way, but I doubt it would be at anything less than a horrible ratio.

Good luck with that. None of those programs you mentioned are transfer partners with SPG.
You could transfer your Chase points to Marriott (1 for 1) and then transfer those to SPG but that move is a 3 for 1 ratio so you would be way short of what you need.

SPG is having a discount promo on some of there finer properties (35%) which might help a bit.

Check here for details.
http://viewfromthewing.boardingarea....-resorts-back/

Moderator's Note: Please let's get back on topic
 

Folks,

This thread is about award booking services. It is not about buying or transferring points and certainly is not about methods of getting points that are in violation of programs rules.

If you want to ask how to obtain SPG points, I suggest posting your question in the Starwood | Starwood Preferred Guest forum.

Thank you for understanding,

TWA884
Travel Tools moderator

I am newer to points and miles and I knew pretty far in advance that I would be taking long trip with several stops and multiple people. I thought I would need about 600K points. So I worked to get as many points as possible. When it came time to book the options were overwhelming and I decided to try booking service (the one I used is not listed).

I was very happy with the results and the customer service. They were able to book my trip for less than 300K points and most legs were business class. Even after paying the fee I came out way ahead vs what I would have booked on my own. For those who are experts and have time to search it's probably not worth it but if you are clueless like me it might be worth checking out.

In need of a service.

All i want to do is go to BKK from SFO on business class. Got 308k AA miles and 125k for the wife. I think paying over $100 is kind of excessive for a simple booking. any recs?

If it's a simple booking you could always do it yourself. I find you get what you pay for.
Don't be cheap. In the grand scheme of things and your total bill for your entire trip, an additional $25 or $50 bucks isn't going to break the bank. At least it shouldn't.

Do the work yourself?

The market supports the pricing or it doesn't. If it is simple, you can do it yourself. I usually try, but have used services and gladly paid the fee when having issues or needing something complex. The knowledge the consultants have means they can find things or be creative in a way I can't. Another way to view it is time. A seemingly simple routing can take a long time to figure out or find as an award, so you pay to not spend that time.

You pay for expertise, time saved, comfort that it'll get done right -- like with any service.

It's very quick and simple to go to the AA and UA websites and see what you learn. I just looked at the UA site. UA charges 80K in business class for one ticket. If you want to fly together, you'll need to find more UA/UR miles for her account or move on to AA. If you find what you need on AA, grab it and you're done.

Award booking service - bad form?
 

Is it considered bad form to contact more than one award booking service for the same trip? I'm planning a trip in Sept2018 but will want to book before the United business class miles increase to 60k for a saver award (Nov2017).
Thanks for any help you can offer. As you can see, I'm a newbie.

Welcome to Flyertalk!:)

I don't think it's necessarily bad form to get in touch with a few award booking services to ask some general questions, but you may want to make it very clear that it is not a specific request to search for availability.

The way award booking services generally work is that the client provides their details regarding preferred destination, number of miles etc. and they're successful in finding availability the client is expected to pay the consulting fee.

Thanks, that is very helpful.

New member on FT and looking forward to contributing and sharing in the community.

To start off, I typically do my own award searches but sometimes I'm looking for hard to get cabin classes on certain airlines and/or am in a time crunch. Have used a few award booking services and here are my quick reviews. For me, a good award booking service needs to have a minute listening ability and honest customer service in order to be effective.

PM me for details.

FlightFox - Used them twice. Decent online system. The first time, I had Roland who was on-point and found us solid flights for our miles balances for our honeymoon. He was cold but effective. Second time around I had Tomas who was a combination of generally unresponsive, incorrect and horrible to the point that I had to reach a resolution with the company founder.

BookYourAward - This is Gary Leff's company. Decent online system that connects with AwardWallet. They were great about offering phone calls to chat through as well so initially offered a sense of expertise. They didn't really listen to my preferences and were pushy about booking immediately whatever they found. They were generally unresponsive and sometimes incorrect, and I was rarely connecting with one person. I ended up booking one leg they recommended and the other leg by myself. They were great about not charging me as their recommendations didn't meet my preferences. They said they would monitor for better options closer to departure but I never heard from them one way or the other.

AwardBird - Snazzy automated system with a little human support from Andrei. Probably hard to work with if you have flexibility in airports and dates as they are so automated and form driven.

JuicyMiles - John showed some ideas but was very unresponsive. I had to constantly follow-up. One month after submitting my form online I called off the search. John was very customer friendly though and his ideas were thoughtful, and would try them again.

AwardButler - Steffen was great and is based in Dubai. He listened to my preferences, was very responsive, offered suggestions in order to show well-informed ideas and was very customer friendly. I'd definitely run my next search by Steffen.

Luxury Consulting - Jasper2009 was AWESOME and is based in Canada. He was high touch and very responsive, asked questions and offered suggestions in order to show well-informed ideas. Most importantly, he listened minutely to everything I mentioned and accounted for it in his suggestions. He found the iconic flights I was looking for, and was even monitoring for better options that could open up closer to departure. He does more than award bookings, including end-to-end travel consulting and luxury hotel bookings as well. Needless to say, I'd run my next search by them.