SPG Pay Your Birth Year Rate
Hotels can get really expensive. So, in order for us to save a bit of cash we do our best to use every promotion available to us. One of Starwood’s greatest promotions out there is the SPG Pay Your Birth Year promotion. Here’s how it works.
After you’re done reading your post, you’ll wish you were older than you really are. The way the SPG Pay Your Birth Year promotion is the following. When you make a booking in a participating Starwood hotel, you will pay the regular rate for your first night. For the second night, you will pay the last two digits of your birth year, and sometimes – very few times – even third or fourth subsequent nights.
Which properties participate of the SPG Pay Your Birth Year promo?
There’s really not a lot, but it’s easy to find out which by going to the SPG promo page and search for your destination to confirm whether your desired hotel is listed. It’s worth mentioning that this promo only applies to properties in the United States, Canada and oddly enough, the one property in the Cayman Islands.
Once you have selected your country, you can narrow down your search by filtering for State/Province and City of your preference and see the participating properties listed out. Having selected the property you want, click on book now and you’ll be taken to the hotel’s site to select your dates. Now, the Pay Your Birth Year promo rates are not available for booking on just ANY night in all hotels, so you’ll have to play around with your dates and see what works. Mostly, they’re available starting on Thursdays or Fridays going over the weekend, but it might be different depending on dates and property.
SPG Pay Age Rate
You will see that once you have gotten to the last step of your reservation you will be displayed the full rate for all nights. Fear not, the lower SPG Pay Your Birth Year rate will be honored once you check in. The front desk clerk will verify your ID to apply the appropriate rate once you arrive at the hotel. Best part? They will honor the birth year rate for ANYONE on the reservation so… what better opportunity to bring granny along with you than this?
A caveat
Some properties, particularly fancy shmansy ones, will tack a $100 floor to this promo. Say you were born in 1975, you will end up paying $175 for your second night under this promo. While this is definitely a buzzkill, this still ends up making sense since some of the higher end hotels are sometimes ridiculously expensive.
SPG Pay Age Rate
The fine print
As usual, you have to read the Tees and Cees. It’s the only way to know what to expect. Here are some of the important ones when trying to take advantage of the promo:
- The rate for reservations containing multiple rooms will vary based on the age of the oldest adult staying in each room. Valid ID and confirmation is required for the oldest guest staying in each room.
Translation: when traveling in groups, spread the older people around in order to fully take advantage of the lowest rates available for each room.
- Must be 18 or older to participate in this promotion.
Unfortunately, if you were excited to bring your millennial kids along, you still got time to change your mind. This is to prevent people checking in with 17 year-olds who were born in year 2000 and paying literally zero dollars for their second night. This does make me question whether SPG will discontinue this awesome promo after 2018, since that’s when post 2000 kids will become of age and ruin everything for me.
- Consecutive reservations for this offer will not be honored.
Tsk, tsk. I know you were thinking of splitting your 9 day stay into three 3 day stays and squeeze this promo even more. Sorry, no can do.
- Offer not applicable to groups.
Sorry. Can’t make a discounted group booking for 20 rooms and expect them to also honor this promo for even deeper discounts per room.
SPG Pay Age Rate
Is it worth it?
Heck, yes! Of course you’ll be saving more or less depending on how old you (or your accompanying guest) are – and you’d never be happier to be an AARP member. It’s also worth noting that this isn’t valid for just standard rooms. Some hotels even list their suites under the Pay Your Birth Year rate, so there is great savings potential for some aspirational stays.
Conjecture
I don’t know what will happen when SPG and Marriott finally complete their merger. I’d love to see some of these cool promotions cross over, but I wouldn’t hold my breath. It does seem silly though, since at the bottom of all SPG pages you can see a “© 2017 Marriott International, Inc., All Rights reserved.” footer note displayed, but oh well.
Having said that… I just found a Marriott property that does honor this. The BWI Airport Marriott until March 2018 by using the Promo Code YQ1.
July 2, 2017
I’d like to meet someone who has actually used this. PYA rate never works for me.
July 2, 2017
You just did! We’ve used it at least 4 times so far this year. It’s all about being flexible with dates/location – and that doesn’t work for everyone all the time.
July 5, 2017
One of the few times in life I wish I was older.
July 5, 2017
Tell me about it! Born in 85… still better than nothing I suppose!
July 5, 2017
My rate is $10 cheaper