Starwood launches 10 new Design Hotels

I love Starwood hotels for tons of reasons, including their awesome SPG loyalty program and their huge selection of unique hotels all over the world.

We used to be die hard Marriott fanboys, but once we earned lifetime Platinum status we moved over to Starwood Hotels and couldn’t be happier.  One of the hotel chains that we have yet to try out is Design Hotels.  It always seemed that wherever we were, they didn’t have a presence.

Over the past year or so, Starwood has been rolling out a bunch of new Design Hotels since they originally started back in 2015 with only 5 hotels.

Design Hotels SPG, From Starwood Website

Design Hotels SPG, From Starwood Website

It’s not so much a merger as it is a partnership, as not all the hotels are participating.  Overall there are 276 hotels currently part of the Design Hotels, and here’s to hoping that Starwood keeps making more hotels eligible for earning and redeeming points. We love staying in unique properties and if we can do it for free, even better!

Design Hotels Map

Design Hotels Map

10 New Properties

I opened up an email today from Starwood announcing a new partnership with 10 hotels, all ready to go and full members of the SPG program.

Hotel St Paul in Montreal

Laluna in Grenada

New Design Hotels

New Design Hotels

Rosas & Xocolate in Mexico

101 Hotel in Iceland

Blake’s Hotel in England

Do & Co in Austria

New Design Hotels

New Design Hotels

Sense Hotel in Bulgaria

Standart Hotel in Russia

Loisium Resort in Austria

Rooms Hotel in Tbilisi, Georgia

New Design Hotels

New Design Hotels

Redemption Values

Being able to redeem star points for awesome hotels like these, to me, is one of the best values out there.

  • Category 3 hotels:  Rooms Hotel, Loisium, Sense Hotel
  • Category 4 hotels:  StandArt and Hotel St Paul
  • Category 5 hotel:  Rosas & Xocolate
  • Category 6 hotels:  Blakes, Do & Co, 101 Hotel, and LaLuna

The real jewels here are the category 3 hotels.  At only 7,000 points a night, this represents a fantastic deal.  As an added bonus, since these are now full SPG properties, you can expect to receive your full Gold/Platinum benefits (in practice).  I say in practice because as they are boutique hotels, some times they might not have rooms for upgrades or offer different services than the big-box chains like Sheraton of Westin.

If you’re looking for a boutique experience and still have the opportunity to earn precious points and nights/stay credits, then I encourage you to take a look at these and the other Design hotels!

Have you stayed at a Design Hotel?  If so, where and what was your experience?

Author: Jon Nickel-D'Andrea

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2 Comments

  1. your comment…”We used to be die hard Marriott fanboys, but once we earned lifetime Platinum status we moved over to Starwood Hotels and couldn’t be happier….”

    Well Marriott is buying Starwood & SPG…so aren’t you concerned that you will loose the Lifetime Platinum status? I am ! I hope they won’t make me start from scratch. Hopefully those of us that have achieved Lifetime Platinum status will be grandfathered into the new/merged program.

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    • I’m not sure. I mean, we’ve got 800 plus nights at Marriott and over 200 at SPG. So I would hope that in their minds 1,000 nights means something. If not, well… then we can cross that bridge when we get there 🙂 I know that for me Hilton and Hyatt won’t be an option. Hyatt doesn’t have enough reach (and they’re usually expensive) and Hilton requires stupid amounts of points to get free nights. SO, in the meantime, business as usual

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