Starwood Preferred Guest, the loyalty program of Starwood hotels, has offered via a tie-up with MasterCard for Asia Pacific card members, SPG Gold status for one year just on completing one stay in the past. This promotion has just returned for the period till 12 July 2015. Here is how it works:

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For those of you who have an SPG account, or sign up with a new account, with an address on file in the Asia Pacific region (ex-Japan), you can benefit from this promotion if you have a World MasterCard or a WorldElite MasterCard issued in the Asia Pacific. You basically need to make one qualifying stay (revenue stay) at a participating SPG hotel, the list is here, and pay for all your expenses using your World/WorldElite MasterCard. In 4 weeks after completing the stay, your account will be upgraded to Gold, and you’ll receive your new upgraded SPG credentials soon after. The full list of Terms & Conditions is here.

While the full benefits of SPG Gold status are enlisted here, here is a quick summary of what to expect as a Gold member:

  • Upgrades to an enhanced room at check-in
  • 4 p.m. late checkout
  • The ability to earn three Starpoints for every eligible dollar spent, which is a 50% bonus over base-level members
  • Your choice of a welcome gift with each stay. Choose from bonus Starpoints, complimentary in-room Internet access and a complimentary beverage.

Enjoy your Gold Status, and if you have any questions, ask me via the comment section and I’ll reply at the earliest?

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After a leisurely few days in Delhi, it was time to go back to Mumbai. I’m usually trying to look away from early morning flights, because I do my fair share on work travel, but this time, I was a little bit greedy to spend some more time at home with the family, so I booked up an early morning flight back. I arrived at the airport in good time, and proceeded to the Air India counters to collect my boarding pass at Terminal 3. Like you’d notice, there was a very long queue at one bank of counters for Monday Morning traffic (Row E), which was the economy counters. On the other side, there was no queue. These were the Golden Edge FFP member and business class queues. Guess where did I go to collect my boarding pass? Winking smile

Air India Terminal 3 DEL checkin counters

Air India Business Class Check-in DEL T3

Security checks were quick, and once I was airside, I had to decide where I wanted to go for about the 45 minutes I ended up having to wait at the airport instead of the 15 I had planned for. Anyhow, I’d been to the Plaza Premiere Lounge multiple times, tried out the Amex Platinum Lounge as well, and there was the new Starbucks at Delhi T3 and the Altitude Lounge right across from the Amex Platinum Lounge which were the places I had not been to.

Fresh from my experience at the Altitude Lounge Mumbai T1A, I decided I’ll try out the Delhi Lounge as well so that I could figure out it Mumbai was a flash in the pan or the lounges had a particular brand standard which all of them would adhere to in terms of look and feel.

When I arrived, as usual, there were only two attendants at the lounge, and no passengers inside. They had a big iMac sitting at the reception, only to check-in passengers into the lounge, however, one of the attendants was catching up on morning news sitting there. I presented them with my ICICI Bank/Jet Airways American Express Sapphiro credit card and my boarding pass, and I was invited inside.

Delhi Altitude Lounge entrance T3

The Lounge seemed to have the same look and feel like the Mumbai one, however, I think it was bigger and maybe had some more seats. There were white bar stools and a white bar and a  lot of lounge chairs.

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Even the Delhi lounge had a television lounge with a couch, which is what I chose to park myself with again. Immediately they brought me a drink of water, and asked me if I wanted juice or another beverage to start the morning.

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I asked for some apple juice, which was served with potato chips and peanuts (beats me when you do that early in the morning!)

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I was presented with the menu, which had quite some options. Since I was up early and hungry, I decided to call for a chicken sandwich, which actually was a pre-made sandwich which was grilled in their kitchen before serving. For breakfast, there was also the option to have cereal or toast.

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While they were preparing the sandwich, i stepped out and took some more pictures.

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A small business centre

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Self serve drinks and snacks

Overall, an enjoyable experience to be here, because food is made to order and there are hot food options, and the lounge is not crowded at all, not unless ICICI/Amex build a critical mass of their jointly-issued premium credit cards.

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A quick reminder for those of you who maybe did not read this post before. Citibank will be performing maintenance on the PremierMiles website from Sunday June 2, 2013 0000 IST to June 4, 2013 2359 IST. This means, for the 72 hours period you will not see the website live and won’t be able to make any travel bookings, redemptions or cancellations to your existing reservations. What is really happening at the backend, common sense says, is a switch of vendor who powered the ticketing (Cleartrip). There may be more changes but I don’t know about these yet.

Anyhow, if you are a Citibank PremierMiles user, and you want to be making any travel reservations or changes to existing ones, it will be a good idea to do so before the night of Saturday June 1, 2013 IST. Also, even if you don’t have any reservations to make, but do have future reservations made via the website, I’d advise you to download/print a copy of those for safekeeping with you just in case these don’t go back up on the website. If you want to have a look at the official FAQs, look here.

If you want to burn your PremierMiles to make reservations during June 2-4, you should head to Goibibo.com which allows for redemption of PremierMiles on their site.

Also, a reminder that after this date, you won’t have any restrictions for the rest of 2013 on earning PremierMiles for booking flight tickets, i.e., it works for more than Rs. 500,000 as well. You’ll also be able to earn 10 PM/100 on hotel and car reservations made via www.premiermiles.co.in.

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