Starwood Is Latest to Offer Big Bonus for Hotel Stays

[[Starwood]] is the latest major family of hotels to announce a significant promotional offer for travel during the first part of 2009.

With the Night After Night promotion, Starwood Preferred Guest members can earn 500 bonus points per night, plus an extra 5,000 bonus points after the tenth night, for stays completed through April 30. So for every ten nights, they’ll earn 10,000 bonus points. There’s no limit to the number of bonus points that can be earned during the promotion period.

To participate, Preferred Guest members must register by March 31.

In addition to Starwood’s bonus deal, there are now generous offers available from Hilton, [% 2802853 | | Marriott %], [% 2792571 | | Hyatt %], and InterContinental. So for the hotel portion of a prospective trip, there are plenty of bonuses in play.

In contrast to the hotels, to date the airlines have limited their sales-promotion efforts to [% 2805705 | | discounting airfares %]. But as the travel slump persists—as it likely will for at least the next six months—the pressure to award bonus miles for flights will increase. And when the airlines do open up the promotional floodgates, travel will be uncommonly rewarding.