SPG Gold...Yaaaayyy!!!

A couple of months back, I had written about a promotion by SPG that offers complimentary Gold level status for a year, for ONE (yeah, that's right, just one) stay in Asia-Pacific, as long as (a) you register for the promotion, and (b) you pay using a WORLD MasterCard.

At the time, I had registered for this promo, with hardly immediate visibility of stays with an SPG property - my annual stay with an SPG property (DXB) had concluded by then. But as they say, when it rains, it pours. I had an opportunity to spend a night at the ITC Windsor, Bengaluru (read trip report here), and another one, quite recently, at the relatively new Westin Chennai - Velachery, in MAA. A trip report on this should follow soon, if I can get myself out of the depression that I get into, every time I recall the stay. But that's a different story and the subject of a separate report.

A week after my stay at the ITC Windsor, I was expecting to have my SPG Gold status reflected in my account, but no dice right up to the time I checked in at the Westin in MAA, which was a whole week after my check-out at ITC Windsor. I even wrote to the SPG helpdesk, who wrote back in a day, to let me know that I may have to wait up to 4 weeks.

Nonetheless, I checked out of the Westin Chennai yesterday, and I was quite surprised to see my SPG account posted with the Starpoints for that stay. What's also interesting, is this!



I'm now officially SPG Gold! And they even credited the 50% bonus Starpoints for Gold, for the Westin stay, to my account. Strangely, no email from SPG yet...

Bottomline - the promotion does work (not that I didn't believe SPG for even one moment, but its always nice when such things happen to you personally!).

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