Los Angeles is one of my favorite cities. The food, culture, and weather make it a top destination and as an SPG loyalist, there are quite a few hotel options in and around the city. Though, If you aren’t careful, you could end up spending way more than you should. Here are some helpful tips for maximizing your Starpoints in Los Angeles and surrounding areas.

What Do You Want to Do With Your Time?

This is an important question to ask yourself. If you’re traveling to Los Angeles, is it to visit the Hollywood Sign? Santa Monica? Both?

Having an idea of what you want to do makes a world of difference when planning for your trip, especially when it comes to redeeming highly-valuable Starpoints.

LA is loaded with cool SPG properties. And don’t forget, Marriott is in the equation, too (especially at a 1:3 redemption rate!).

Identify Properties in the Area and Calculate Value

Now that you’ve narrowed down what you want to do and see while in LA, it’s time to begin the research. For the purposes of this post, let’s say you want to stay a manageable distance from LAX airport and Santa Monica, but still in the general Downtown area.

To help with your decision making, I suggest making a spreadsheet to calculate the value per point you’re getting for each hotel. If you don’t want to make your own, I made one for you. Just remember to save a copy for yourself as you can’t edit it.

Note: The Marriott properties listed are represented by their redemption rate divided by 3.

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Remember, higher value wins!

As you can see in the table, transferring Starpoints to Marriott at a 1-to-3 ratio gives you the best bang for your buck with three Marriott properties at the top of the list with values well over 2 cents per Starpoint…including a Ritz-Carlton!

I’ve personally stayed at the Sheraton Grand (lounge), Westin Bonaventure (no lounge), and the Le Meridien Delfina (no lounge) and they are all fantastic properties. It’s just up to your personal preference and tastes.

How to Transfer Starpoints to Marriott

If you decide you want to book one of the Marriott properties, transferring SPG Starpoints to Marriott is simple and relatively instant. Don’t forget you also get Platinum Elite status with Marriott if you are a Platinum SPG member.

To transfer Starpoints, click the following link and select the box below:

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Starpoints must be transferred in increments of 1,000 so in cases like the JW LA Live and the Residence Inn, where the breakdown is not a clean break, you’ll have to round up.

In Summary

Your calculations will vary due to fluctuating cash rates on the dates you’re traveling so keep in mind that the above output most likely won’t be applicable to your case and could very well be flipped!

You can’t go wrong with staying at any of the downtown LA properties; It’s a seedier area than Beverly Hills, but often I find the value of BH hotels just isn’t worth the return.

With that said, make sure to due your due diligence when using precious Starpoints as they are considered the most valuable loyalty currency in the game.

What are your tips for maximizing Starpoints in LA?