Starwood Platinum Status!

As many of you long time LCD readers have known, this year has been quite busy in terms of travel. In fact, we've spent over 100+ nights in hotels.

So when I'm back home, my stuffed animals friends like to have a sleepover party on the nights I'm sleeping in my own bed.

But one consolation for traveling so much is that we my father finally achieved Starwood Platinum Status today when his 25th hotel stay posted to his account.

The official Platinum status benefits you get (for hitting 25 stays or 50 nights in a calendar year) are as follows:

• Complimentary upgrades to the best available room at check-in (including SUITES!)
• Choice of welcome gift (500 Starwood points, free continental breakfast or a local gift)
• Executive Club lounge access (free snacks and drinks)
• Free in-room internet
• 4PM late checkout
• Platinum Concierge service
• 10 Suite Night Upgrade Certificates (only if you hit 50 nights, not just 25 stays)

Because the internet costs $12-25 per day, the 500 SPG points are worth at least $10-15 and a room upgrade could be worth hundreds of dollars, getting Platinum status is a huge deal for people, especially someone like my father who has gotten spoiled from being a Hyatt Diamond member.

To be 100% honest though, we really didn't stay 25 times or 50 nights. My father had the benefit of having the Starwood American Express credit cards (both the personal version and the business version, which he just applied for this past Sunday while they're still offering 30,000 SPG points for signing up).

When you have one of the cards, the Starwood member gets credit for 2 stays and 5 nights. When you have both cards, the Starwood member gets an additional 2 stays and an additional 5 nights (4 stays and 10 nights credit in total). So for my father to hit Platinum this year, he only needed 21 stays or 40 nights.

Now that's still a lot of hotel stays which can be quite expensive. But fortunately, Starwood also counts award stays (when you pay with points).  Of those 40 nights to hit Platinum, we only paid full cash for just 11 of them (6 in cheap Thailand, 2 paid by his company, and just 3 regular cash paid stays). The other 29 nights we needed to hit Platinum were subsidized using Starwood points (either 100% free Award Night or their Cash & Points rate).

Before when we only had Gold status, we just received free internet and a 4PM late checkout. They would sometimes "upgrade" us to an enhanced room (ie, on a higher floor), but that's not that impressive when you're staying in a 6 story hotel. So the real Platinum benefit is that we will now get a REAL upgrade.

We'll test this out when we arrive at the Westin Beaver Creek (Colorado) in a few weeks and see if we get bumped up to their spacious 2 bedroom suite. It sure would be nice to have my own hotel bedroom instead of sharing it with my snoring parents. I'm not holding my breath but I do have my tiny baby fingers crossed! In the meantime, I'll just keep eating ice cream.