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Here at InsideFlyer UK we frequently write about opportunities to pick up elite status without meeting the usual requirements. One of our favourites is the Hilton Honors status match programme. Joe wrote about it quite recently… But alas his tip wasn’t valid for long…
Two fundamental changes have recently been implemented on the status match website (click here).
The first change is making it more difficult to meet the status match requirements. Instead of 4 stays for Gold or 8 stays for Diamond, you now require…
- 10 nights for Gold status
- 18 nights for Diamond status
You must complete the requirements within 90 days from the date that your status match is approved. Award nights should still qualify however.
For those who really take travel hacking to the extreme, you obviously can no longer meet the requirements for Diamond with 8 one-night stays. Instead you will need to stay more than twice as many nights to qualify…
Moreover, the standard method of reaching Diamond status only requires 30 stays or 60 nights during a calendar year. When you look at it from a different perspective, that hurdle might seem rather easier to complete over the course of 365 days, instead of 18 nights out of 90!
The second change is that you will only enjoy Gold status for the 90-day duration of your status challenge, instead of Diamond.
Apart from these two changes, it is too early to tell whether Hilton Honors have made other elements more restrictive, such as reconsidering the competing levels of status that they will match.
What do you think? Is 18 nights out of 90 even achievable for most people?
It was inevitable this would happen after every blogger under the sun wrote about it. It’s a good thing. Making status matches ad hoc on a business case only basis would be far better than these widely publicised free for all schemes.
I don’t mind that there are a variety of approaches to “loyalty”. At Hilton everybody can be elite, which means that some low volume travellers can get free breakfast and the odd upgrade, but shouldn’t expect much more. It’s a potentially valuable niche that doesn’t necessarily cost much to target.
If you want “proper” elite benefits that are appropriately rationed, then you move to Hyatt or Marriott.
No, that’s a load of tosh Craig. Fair enough: free breakfast doesn’t cost much to implement. No problem with that. But lounge access in European Hiltons – the key benefit of diamond with Hilton – has been degraded significantly with the free for all mentality over the past five years or so. Maybe Hilton are starting to a proper cost benefit analysis. Personally, Id like to see all hotel and airline schemes adopt the BA mentality, with an ad hoc approach so that someone who genuinely does stay 50 nights in a hotel, or takes 200 flights a year, can switch their business. Your blog’s recent post: ‘diamond status for £150’ or whatever it was sums up why Hilton has gone back to what they used to do. I’m glad. I’ll start staying in Hiltons again from 2021 once all the current riff-raff have been cleared out from the lounges.
I’m not sure why you so vehemently want Hilton to follow your preferred approach to elite status – just stay at a different chain where nobody gets to shortcut – or why you think that all hotel chains should be exactly the same when it comes to elite benefits / methods of reaching status.
I simply avoid Hiltons as much as possible because I happen to know that lounges are indeed overcrowded, upgrades hard to come by and Honors points increasingly worthless. But if the lounges are overflowing, then Hilton might be making decent profits out of their strategy and I respect that completely… It’s up to every individual consumer to decide whether it works for them.
I would be grateful for advice how to evidence Marriott status to Hilton. Both website and app profile or overview would only reveal my first name and therefore screenshots have been rejected by Hilton.
Kind regards,
Arkadio
Interesting problem. I’ve had a sniff around the Marriott website and I can’t see a way to do it either. Maybe with a screenshot of the “edit profile” page?
I’m not in charge of any loyalty scheme. But if I was running a hotel scheme, I would average out the total number of annual nights/stays required, and offer people a cumulative offer. So, Hilton Diamond is 30 stays / 60 nights per year or 2.5 stays / 5 nights per month. ‘Stay with us three times and we’ll give you diamond status for a month. You can keep that diamond status as long as you stay with us at least three times a month’ etc. I’d up the number to five. And I’d generate more revenue for Hilton than they are currently getting.
I am grateful for the advice .