You Won’t Believe How Many Starpoints One Member Earned In 2015

You Won’t Believe How Many Starpoints One Member Earned In 2015

20

Every year Starwood publishes some fascinating member statistics (here’s their 2013 year in review and 2014 year in review). Anyone who is passionate about loyalty programs probably wishes all programs published similar recaps every year. Some statistics are really surprising, others are what you’d expect, and some are even less than you’d expect.

Starwood has just published their 2015 year in review, which has statistics accurate as of December 11, 2015.

While I’ll post the infographic below, first I’ll share what I consider to be some of the most interesting statistics about 2015 activity:

  • One SPG member earned 30,328,030 Starpoints — wow, I guess someone is a really big credit card spender!
  • The Westin Maui Resort is the property at which most SPG members redeemed points — no surprise there!
  • The most Starwood properties visited by a single member is 73 — that’s a high number of unique properties, though I guess isn’t that surprising
  • The most countries visited by a single SPG member is 24 — of course these are presumably just countries where they stayed at Starwood properties, so the actual number of countries visited could have been much higher
  • As part of the partnership between Starwood and Uber, one member took 1,127 Uber rides in 2015 — that’s a bit over three rides per day, which isn’t actually that much [Update: the partnership between SPG and Uber ended in December of 2017)
  • One SPG member earned 247,560 Starpoints through Crossover Rewards with Delta — since you earn one Starpoint per dollar spent on Delta, that means they spent nearly $250,000 on Delta [Update: the partnership between SPG and Delta ended in July of 2018]

Here’s the full infographic, with lots of other fun statistics:

Starwood-2015-1 Starwood-2015-2 Starwood-2015-3 Starwood-2015-4

Bottom line

While all kinds of airlines and hotels publish customer infographics, I find Starwood does among the best jobs. The above statistics are ones which I actually find interesting. The ones I find most interesting are that someone likely spent ~$30 million on their Starwood American Express and someone spent ~$250,000 with Delta. Yow!

I wonder how the person who earned 30+ million Starpoints is feeling about the merger. Or perhaps if they’re spending that amount on credit cards they don’t actually care that much.

Which SPG member statistics do you find most interesting?

(Tip of the hat to Mike)

Conversations (20)
The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.
Type your response here.

If you'd like to participate in the discussion, please adhere to our commenting guidelines. Anyone can comment, and your email address will not be published. Register to save your unique username and earn special OMAAT reputation perks!

  1. Jason Perkins Guest

    Ben, do you have the URL for the Starwood year in review microsite?

  2. Peter Guest

    Could you please advice any credit card that has insurance on luggage delay or lost and also any other travel inconvenience?
    Thank you very much for your help.

    Peter

  3. Al Guest

    Love these types of stats.

  4. Sad Face Guest

    You don't see Marriott posting anything like this & their members getting excited about it. Sad Face to SPG

  5. jack Guest

    I bet the person with 30,000,000 points in a year really doesn't care too much about the points.

    in talking with my ambassador he has some clients who travel a lot and get several million points thru credit card spend yearly, and always use them to stay in suites around the world, and don't really care too much or understand the redemption rates, they just call for a room.

  6. Sam Guest

    You can collect star points without using their credit card. That figure probably includes points through hotel spend.

    im surprised you didn't think/mention it in your post - but then again, you do need the referrals

  7. Rob New Member

    @James Ukich

    12 MILLION of manufactured spend?! What did they do, flip an apartment on Central Park West and put it on their SPG Amex?! I can't even imagine how that would be accomplished.

    But I would certainly like to know :)

  8. James Ukich Guest

    @B:

    Manufactured Spend spelled backwards?

  9. Simon Gold

    Lewis Hamilton maybe. Known SPG fan.

  10. Ivan Y Guest

    This year I made 12MM spg points but 99% of that was SM which I think would count against the total. I am pretty sure I am a 1%er based on what I see around FT and MP

  11. Santastico Diamond

    The Westin Maui may be the best SPG option to redeem points in the island but there are several better hotels in Maui in terms of quality and luxury than the Westin.

  12. Tom Guest

    "The Westin Maui Resort is the property at which most SPG members redeemed points". I think you need to reword that one. I don't think most members (i.e. more than 50%) stayed in Maui this year.

  13. Santastico Diamond

    And now all those points will be devalued by Marriott. :)

  14. Greg N Member

    Perhaps some of the $30 million spend was for SPG hotels - in which case maybe they were earning 3 points per dollar?

  15. Brickell M Guest

    safe to the the 30mm user wasn't the guy who bought 170 mm art on his amex. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/arts/international/liu-yiqian-modigliani-nu-couche.html?_r=0

  16. Eric Guest

    That's... 250,000 turned into... SKYPESOS????

    We should rename them SKYZIMBABWEANDOLLARS™

  17. pavel Guest

    imagine redeeming 677k starpoints for that stupid boxing match. unbelievable. to each his/her own, i guess!

  18. Nick Guest

    Could be an event planner.

  19. Anshul Guest

    Maybe some part of the merger was paid with SPG credit card ;)

Featured Comments Most helpful comments ( as chosen by the OMAAT community ).

The comments on this page have not been provided, reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any advertiser, and it is not an advertiser's responsibility to ensure posts and/or questions are answered.

Jason Perkins Guest

Ben, do you have the URL for the Starwood year in review microsite?

0
Peter Guest

Could you please advice any credit card that has insurance on luggage delay or lost and also any other travel inconvenience? Thank you very much for your help. Peter

0
Al Guest

Love these types of stats.

0
Meet Ben Schlappig, OMAAT Founder
5,163,247 Miles Traveled

32,614,600 Words Written

35,045 Posts Published