Starwood Adds “Flexible Search” For Cash And Points Availability!

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 The US Mint should be able to help you there in no time!

Starwood has added a wonderful new flexible search option for cash and points availability on spg.com

First off, some background information:  There will always be a debate on whether you are better off using your Starwood Starpoints on hotel stays or transferring them into miles.

When you transfer them into miles you get a 25% bonus, so 20,000 Starpoints becomes 25,000 miles on dozens of airlines.  You are better off earning Starpoints with credit card spending than earning miles as you will earn more miles by transferring Starpoints into miles than you will by just earning miles.  Plus you’ll have the flexibility to choose from dozens of airlines.

But there are numerous ways of using Starpoints for hotel stays that can be even more lucrative than miles.

-The traditional Starpoint hotel usage allows you to book a room at any hotel without any capacity controls.  Even if it is peak season and rooms are a small fortune, you can still redeem the same amount of Starpoints for a room, starting from just 2,000 Starpoints per night depending on what category (1-7) the hotel is in. When you redeem 4 nights with points in this manner, the 5th night is free!

-Another variation is the nights and flights option where you get 5 free nights and 50,000 miles for less Starpoints than it would normally cost to book both separately.

-Finally there is one of my favorites, the Cash And Points option.  It’s available on category 3-6 hotels (its also available for category 1-2 hotels in Asia/Pacific) and is often a bargain.  I’ve gotten $500 rooms for just 2,800 Starpoints + $45 for a night with Cash And Points.  Do the math, that’s a value of over 16 cents per Starpoint! ($500-$45=$455/2,800 Starpoints=16.25cpp.  And that’s not even counting the upgrade from the room into a 3 balcony suite normally costing over $1,500 per night!) There are some truly amazing values out there with Cash And Points.

The only problem with Cash And Points is that unlike with the traditional Starpoint hotel usage the rooms are capacity controlled.  Until this point the only way to check availability for Cash And Points has been to manually plug in each date that you want and see if Cash And Points comes up as an option.

Now all you have to do is type in your destination on spg.com and you don’t even have to enter a date, just click “find now.”  A list of the hotels at your destination will then come up.  Click on the “Cash And Points” option and then select “Dates Flexible.”  An easy to use calendar will pop up and you can easily find dates that have Cash And Points availability! You can even have multiple calendars open at the same time for all of the different hotels on the search results page.

Thanks for the new functionality Starwood!