Starwood Preferred Guest Gold status is handy to have, offering complimentary room upgrades, late check-out and extra Starpoints earn as its primary benefits.
And it is even nicer if it comes as a free benefit of your credit card.
Starwood Gold usually takes ten stays to earn, but a handful of ‘World’ MasterCards on the market in Australia offer Starwood Gold status after just one stay. These are the cards that offer it and the steps needed to trigger the benefit.
The benefit of Starwood Gold status
You can check out our comprehensive guide to Starwood Preferred Guest status levels.
At Starwood Hotels, you’ll receive preferred room types (not always upgrades; sometimes just slightly better rooms on higher floors or in better locations), three Starpoints per US Dollar spent, and what could be the best benefit: a 4pm late check-out.
About the MasterCard and SPG tie-up
The ‘World’ designator on a MasterCard indicates that it participates in the appropriately named ‘MasterCard Privileges’ program. There’s also a ‘World Elite’ level but I don’t know of any of those issued in Australia.
Here is the little World designator you’re looking for on eligible cards:
For World MasterCard holders in Australia, one stay at a participating hotel in the Asia-Pacific will trigger a status upgrade 4-6 weeks after your stay.
In Australia, you can stay at any Starwood-branded property except The Old Clare Hotel, Chippendale.
That includes The Westin Sydney, The Westin Melbourne, and Sheraton properties on the Gold Coast and in Port Douglas.
King Room at the Sheraton Melbourne
The Four Points by Sheraton Perth is included and is one of the cheapest local hotels in Australia to pick up the one-night stay needed for this offer.
As long as your booking would normally earn Starpoints, then it should trigger the night needed for the World MasterCard offer. You’ll also need to pay for the stay on your MasterCard.
You will need to pre-register before your stay online, and input a bank promotion code (which you can get by calling your bank) and the first six digits of your card.
Existing and new members of Starwood Preferred Guest are both eligible, and the offer is also only usable once per Starwood account, so you’ll only get the bump up to Gold once even if you hold the card ongoing.
Finally, completely unrelated to the MasterCard World offer, the American Express Platinum Charge also offers Starwood Gold status as well, while American Express Membership Rewards and Diners Rewards both offer points transfers to Starwood too.
Summing up
Having had personal experience of using Gold Status from the World MasterCard offer, I found the welcome amenity, late check-out and extra points all very handy.
They didn’t make a material difference to any individual part of each stay I made at Starwood Hotels, but the recognition of Gold-level membership was certainly welcome.
Starwood Gold status is not a reason to hold or apply one for one of the participating cards exclusively, but worth bearing in mind if you already hold or are considering getting a World MasterCard.
I just noticed that you can only bump one through this offer.
We did this with my wife SPG account, I am thinking to do this next year once my wife Gold Status has expired.
Is there any expiry date for this offer?
And do I have to book through SPG.com? or can I book through 3rd party website like Booking or Agoda?
And for Marriot Gold, do I need to report anything? or it will automatically bumped up as well?
Hey Keith,
My partner just got approved for Westpac altitude black which comes with the World Master.
I am trying to figure out A. Do they issue world master for additional cardholder?
B. If so, can the additional cardholder also get SPG gold?
Many Thanks
SL
From my reading of the terms and understanding of how the promotion works, I don’t think that supplementary cardholders would be excluded. You just input your mastercard number as verification you hold a World variant of the card along with your bank promotion code (which I think is static across all cardholders), so I don’t believe it could check if it was primary or supplementary. And there’s nothing excluding supplementary cardholders in the terms that I could see.
However, I haven’t tested this…
Does anyone know if a points and pay redemption will trigger the offer? I’m thinking of burning 2000 spg points and USD35 at the Aloft Bangkok simply to get gold.
In my experience (a couple of years ago, mind you) it was any stay that qualified as a stay for SPG purposes, which includes redemptions.
I did this in June 2015 and have found it very useful. Given how long SPG status lasts it would probably make more sense to do this early next year and effectively get it for 2 years.
Hey Keith,
I was under the impression that Commonwealth’s Diamond card offer to get SPG Gold expired some months ago. Is this not the case?
The offer is for any World MasterCard cardholder, and CBA Diamond still is a World MasterCard. The offer as a whole has an expiry date applied – this was mid year in both 2015 and 2016 – and it was renewed each year. This year it took them a few weeks to renew the offer after the expiry date but it did come back, so AFAIK CBA Diamond should still be eligible for this offer now.
I recently stayed at the Four Points Sheraton Brisbane, and emailed the hotel before I booked to see whether they were participating in the promotion (even though they’re not on the list).
They said yes, so I booked with my Commbank Diamond MC, and while I was somewhat doubtful surprise surprise about two weeks after my stay I am now SPG Gold!
Also a reminder that Marriott has now merged with SPG so you can get both Marriott and SPG Gold in one stay with this offer!
The Mastercard you get with a Diners Club card is also eligible
Looks like the initial qualifying night (now) only includes Westin hotels in APAC, not Sheraton, Four Points, etc. I didn’t need the bank promo code, just my full card number during registration.
Thanks shehaal – yep, looks like terms have changed. Thanks for the heads up.
Hey, Looking at the t’s and c’s it looks like all hotels are participating – on http://www.worldcard.mastercard.com/content/mc/offer-exchange/world/ap/en/travel/starwood-preferred-guest.html
it dives you to: http://www.spg-asiapacific.com/worldmastercardgold/en/participating.html?EM=VTY_SPG_WORLDMASTERCARDGOLDPARTICIPATING_PROMOTION
and Westin, Sheraton etc are all there.
Just to say this offer is a once only
I got up to gold with it 3 years ago (found it next to useless- upgrades were always barely noticeable)
Thought it would be useful this year so stayed and paid by MasterCard to be told I’d used up my upgrade 3 years ago – in an insulting email too , and offered a challenge if I paid for the privilege
I’m off Starwood. I stay there 2times a year and they don’t value that
Good point, I’ll add the ‘one time’ per account restriction in above.