Are you a small business owner? Do you do a decent amount of traveling, or maybe just want rewards that let you do so? The Starwood Preferred Guest business credit card from American Express offers some distinct advantages you can’t get anywhere else. Let’s review the top 10 benefits you are going to get by going with this card:

#1: It’s the number one card for airline rewards

This is a very unique advantage that no other card offers. Your Starpoints can be transferred directly to the frequent flier programs for over 30 major airlines. This is the only American Express (or any credit card, for that matter) that lets you do that. The best part is that the conversion is a 1 Starpoint = 1 mile conversion, almost always. So this is practically like having 30 airline reward cards in one!

#2: Low annual fee

With the business Gold and Platinum from AmEx, you would have to be shelling out hundreds of dollars. Meanwhile the Starwood business credit card has an annual fee of only $65 (and even that is waived for your first year).

#3: Promotional offer

When you use our special sponsored offer you will get 10,000 Starpoints after first purchase + another 15,000 points for spending $5k in the first 6 months + your first year free.

#4: Earning points

We already discussed above why the rewards program on the Starwood business credit card can’t be beat when it comes to redeeming points. But how about earning them? Well it’s a pretty generous system:

• You get a total of 4+ points per dollar spent at Starwood hotels – 2 points through the credit card and at least 2 points through the Starwood Preferred Guest loyalty rewards program.
• You get 1 point per dollar on all your other spending
• There are no restrictions on the amount of points you can earn

#5: Achieve faster SPG elite status

As a business Starwood cardholder, every year you are automatically given 5 nights of credit that count towards your elite status level.

#6: The ability to pay in full or carry a balance

Obviously it goes without saying that we all want to pay our balances in full and avoid interest. But sometimes business can be unpredictable and our company may have a bad month or quarter. So it helps to at least have the option to pay over time, if needed. The Green/Gold/Platinum charge cards from American Express don’t allow that but since the Starwood business is a credit card, you have that ability.

#7: At Sheraton get 3 nights for the price of 2

This is one of the more recent benefits added to the credit card program. If you check-in between Thurs-Sat at participating Sheraton Hotels & Resorts, you get 1 free night for every 2 that you pay for. I know someone that used this for a conference they attended in Los Angeles and they stayed 6 nights for the price of 4, which gave him a couple extra days after the conference to have a mini-vacation.

#8: Purchase Protection and Extended Warranty

These are two benefits that American Express offers that are automatically included on all eligible purchases. The first covers you for 90 days after you buy something in the event you accidentally damage it or it gets stolen. With the warranty benefit, all qualified items with a manufacturer’s U.S. warranty will be given up to double coverage (a max of one extra year) if the original length of coverage is 5 years or less. From firsthand experience, I can tell you both of these are great for office equipment, like computers and printers, which are prone to breaking down and going bad!

#9: Business-friendly billing

I always laugh when non-business owners complain about doing taxes, because what they have to do is nothing compared to what us business owners have to go through! Thankfully American Express helps to simply your accounting by allowing you to do things like creating customized reports that organize spending by category, the ability to download to Quickbooks, and a year-end summary that breakdown all your charges and categorizes them.

#10: Additional cards are free

Something I don’t like about many business credit cards is that they charge fees for additional cardholders. This is a huge drawback if the employees you want to give cards to won’t be spending enough to make the fees worthwhile.

However with the Starwood business-version credit card you can as many extra cards as you would like without paying an extra dime for them.

Apply now and get 10,000 bonus points after first purchase (enough for a free night at a category 4 property!) and 15,000 more for spending $5k within 6 months