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Back in March, Hilton Honors was the first major hotel chain to offer a generous extension of elite status to its members. The other major hotel chains soon followed. This generosity did lead to a bit of a problem for the hotel chains – if you take away the requirement for members to stay X number of nights to renew elite status, then those high volume members might not feel any pressure to stay with your hotel chain until 2021. (when you really need them NOW!)

Hilton Honors has come up with an elegant solution. ALL nights between 1 January – 31 December 2020 will automatically be rolled over to 2021.

How Will This Work?

I have previously written about gaming the Hilton Honors rollover night system to improve your chances at achieving a certain level of status. Click here for details. The nuances of that trick are almost irrelevant, however, since ALL nights earned in 2020 will roll over to 2021.

But it must be highlighted again and again that only NIGHTS will rollover to 2021.  NOT stays or base points earned.

As a reminder, you can qualify for the various levels of Hilton Honors elite status by:

• 60 nights, 30 stays or earning 120,000 base points for DIAMOND
• 40 nights, 20 stays or earning 75,000 base points for GOLD
• 10 nights, 4 stays or earning 25,000 base points for SILVER

So…  Any nights you spend at a Hilton hotel during 2020 will not be wasted. You will now have from 1 January 2020 until 31 December 2021 to reach the targets of:

• 60 nights for Diamond
• 40 nights for Gold

(Silver is basically useless, apart from the 5th night free benefit on award stays)

And in case you’d forgotten after several months at home, award nights DO count for elite status qualification with Hilton Honors…

The Bottom Line

This updated policy is a nice added incentive for Hilton Honors members to stay with Hilton during what remains of 2020. I would be thrilled if other hotel chains felt obliged to follow suit, as I have more than 30 elite nights in the bank for pre-COVID travels that are essentially wasted at the moment…

What about you? Will this change incentivise you to stay at Hilton Honors hotels when you might have been tempted to stay elsewhere? Let us know in the comments section…