Questions and Answers

With the Marriott/Starwood integration underway I wonder if you have any thoughts or have heard any buzz on which card will win out or if both will continue to co-exist (along with the Ritz card). At the 1:3 conversion rate the SPG card is clearly more valuable for point accumulation while the Annual Cat 1-5 free night redemption on the Marriott card can easily cover it’s $85 annual fee. Now that you can use the SPG AmEx at Marriott properties and earn the bonus spend I find my Marriott card isn’t getting any use. Wondering if I should keep it or drop it before the next annual renewal. What would you do?

There probably wont be any details about the credit cards until we hear about the integration of loyalty programs. I’d hold onto the card since the annual free night is worth the $85.

Hey guys related to this topic, I had a question about star points and Amex points. I know they are 2 separate entities but isn’t the spg card an Amex card? So why doesn’t it become Amex points instead of becoming its own “starpoints” also as per the website, 1,000 Amex points can be converted into 333 star points. Can the reverse process be done to redeem 1,000 Amex points for 333 star points or a similar ratio. Thanks for your help in advance.

Through whatever agreement Amex has with SPG, the SPG Amex card earns Starpoints and other Amex cards that earn Membership Rewards points convert to Starpoints at the 3:1 ratio.

And no, you can’t convert SPG points to MRs, which is one reason why Lucky values Starpoints higher.