How To Stay For FREE In New York City!

New York is a great place to visit with so much to do, but for family travel, it is one expensive city! So if New York City is on your bucket list, here are some great options to cut the price. One option is to take advantage of the Starwood American Express Business card. The offer ends November 1st so don't delay on this one. The offer is for 25,000 points for $6,000 spend and if you spend another $4,000 in 6 months, you get another 10,000 points plus the 10,000 that you earned. So you would end up with 45,000 Starwood points. The annual fee of $95 is waived for the first year. 

It's a big spend, but if you have property taxes coming up or other big expenses like college tuition payments, this might be a good deal for you. 

What does 45,000 Starwood points get you in New York City? Since my focus is on family travel, I look at hotels that offer value like 4 or 5 people in a room and breakfast. 

My first choice here would be to use the points for the Sheraton Times Square. Each night costs 12,000 Starwood points. A perk of the American Express business card is access to the club which offers free breakfast and happy hour. The happy hour usually includes beer, wine and heavy appetizers.  Our family has used the happy hour several times as dinner. If you use 12,000 points for a hotel, breakfast and dinner in New York City for the entire family, that's almost FREE family travel. 

Starwood points also transfer to dozens of airlines and to Marriott at 1:3. I used awardmapper.com to check out hotels in New York City. Marriott hotels were around 40,000-80,000 points per night. If you transferred the 45,000 Starwood points to Marriott, you would have 135,000 Marriott points. If you found a hotel for 40,000 points per night, you would have 3 nights paid for. 

The other option is to transfer the 45,000 Starwood points to an airline. Most of the airline partners offer a bonus of 5,000 points for every 20,000 Starwood points that you transfer. So your 45,000 Starwood points could net you 55,000 American Airlines points for example. 

That's enough points for 2 round trip tickets from LAX to New York City. 

That's how we do it at almost FREE family travel! 

*If you decide to apply for the Starwood American Express Business card, please use my referral link. It's the same offer you would find online, but you will be supporting my blog and my mission to help families travel for almost FREE. Thank you!