2013 has been the year of devaluations in loyalty programs. I was pleased to learn of a positive change for once.
Marvellous Suite at the W Hong Kong
Suite Night Awards from Starwood Preferred Guest that were scheduled to expire at the end of 2013 will be extended to April 30, 2014. I reached out on Twitter to confirm this, and was pleased to get the following response:
Confirmed by @spg twitter team
Suite Night Awards are a nice bonus for guests who stay at least 50 nights per year in Starwood hotels. I’ve discussed my mixed feelings on the Suite Night Award program and did a comparison with other confirmed suite upgrade programs. It is a nice feature, but is often much too difficult to use successfully. I’ve tried my best to use these before they expire without much luck. In the past few months, I have applied them for each stay at Starwood hotels, even some where I normally wouldn’t bother. For example I had an upgrade into a 2 room suite at the Sheraton Detroit Metro Airport where I was only awake in the room for maybe 3 hours over the course of my stay. I’d prefer to use these for vacation trips in more exotic locations, but I didn’t want them to go to waste.
Final Thoughts
I’m obviously pleased about this change, but I wish I would have known about it sooner. Then I might be carrying over more than just one SNA under these new rules. My account still shows these expiring on 12/31/13, but hopefully that will be updated soon. Good job SPG!
How many SNA’s do you have remaining? Will 4 extra months help you so these can get used?
HT: Ben
Note: this was a one off-promotion several years back. Thankfully Marriott has retained Suite Night Awards post-merger.
