The Announcement
Starwood Preferred Guest announced that Korean Air’s SKYPASS program is now a transfer partner. The transfer rate is the same as always, one SPG point is worth one SKYPASS mile. In addition to that if you transfer 20,000 points you’ll receive an additional 5,000 miles for free making the rate effectively 1:1.25 (SPG are also offering an additional 5,000 miles for every 20,000 SPG points when you convert them to American Airlines, meaning that 20,000 SPG points = 30,000 American Airline miles until the end of the month).
Additional Bonus
To celebrate the launch of this partnership if you don’t already have an SPG account you’ll receive 1,000 SPG points per stay in the Asia-Pacific region (up to a maximum of 2,000 SPG points or two stays) until November 12th, 2015.
Our Thoughts
I personally don’t think that transferring SPG points to airline miles is a good use of them, I prefer to keep them for SPG stays given how difficult the points are to earn. It’s already been possible to convert Chase UR and Diners Club points to Korean Air and I find both of these less valuable than SPG points so I doubt I’d actually use this new transfer option.
It’s never a bad thing when something new is added though, so kudos to SPG and Korean Air for the new partnership. Keep in mind both of the SPG cards currently have a 30,000 point sign up bonus on them and that if you applied when it was only 25,000 points then make sure you call in and get your 5,000 courtesy points.
