Makes your upgrade options skyrocket

This is easily one of the most lucrative buy-miles options that has come out since I started covering this beat in 1996. The hotel chain has increased the Starpoints purchase limit to 100,000, up from 20,000. (Starpoints are otherwise awarded for both hotel stays at various partner chains, and purchases with the American Express Starwood Preferred Guest card.) The cost remains the same, 3.5¢ per mile, with the smallest denomination being 1,000 miles—and you still get the 25% bonus when you transfer 20,000 Starpoints at a time into miles with most of the card’s 30 airline partners. That means transferring 100,000 Starpoints nets you 125,000 miles, lowering the per mile cost to 2.8¢. It takes only minutes to join the hotel program by calling (800) 528-4800.

In other words, you can now have enough miles to upgrade almost overnight on any of Starwood’s 30 airline partners. Upgrading has two considerable advantages over free award tickets: You earn both miles and elite credit on the base fare, and seat availability is usually much better. The increased limit also gives you a shot at the frequent flyer summit, a real First Class seat with airlines offering three classes of service.

More Chances to Earn Elite Status and Finding Mileage Seats Say United doesn’t have an upgrade to Business Class on your Los Angeles-Tokyo flight (using miles in your MileagePlus account). Here’s your detour: Buy 40,000 Starpoints, turn them into 50,000 All Nippon (ANA) miles, and use them to upgrade on ANA. Because ANA is a United partner, you still earn elite status credit. There are three other (not small) payoffs: ANA’s upgradeable fare is lower than United’s, its seats are wider and recline much farther (to 170 degrees), and ANA requires 10,000 fewer miles.

This is what I call a nice backup to United! (Remind me again why I was thinking United to Asia in the first place?)

Upgrading the family—or youself more often Starwood’s rules allow members with the same address to “pool” their points. For a family of four, that means that a single account could wind up with 400,000 Starpoints after each individual purchased 100,000 on his own—which with the 25% bonus ends up amounting to 500,000 miles. Remember though, you can buy miles in some other programs more cheaply: see FCF Dec. 2006 for more.

The Two Transfer-Bonus Exceptions Continental and United offer the transfer bonus, however they make transferring Starpoints very expensive. It takes two Starpoints to get one mile with each carrier. But there is a backdoor to getting a 1:1 exchange rate on Continental. Transfer Starpoints into Amtrak points—that’s right, the railroad—which you then transfer into miles with Continental. (Amtrak limits transfers to 25,000 miles annually.) This demonstrates the major benefit of having a loyalty card with so many partners. Again, remember the other buy-miles options we’ve discussed, like Amex’s offer, with 16 partners at 2.5¢. We’ll have more soon on unlimited miles-purchase strategies.

Sample Savings With Starpoint-Purchase Strategy

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