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Over the weekend we saw Marriott’s bonus elite nights dropping into members’ Bonvoy accounts but Hilton has just upped the ante by announcing that all Hilton Honors elite nights earned in 2020 will rollover into 2021 making Hilton elite status a whole lot easier to earn next year.
Here’s what Hilton has announced:
“To help make every night count, all Hilton Honors members who stay at any Hilton-branded hotel between January 1 – December 31, 2020 will have all nights automatically rollover to next year to count towards their 2021-2023 Hilton Honors tier status, when they book through Hilton.com or the Hilton Honors App.”
All Hilton Honors elites have already had their statuses extended by a year and will enjoy their current status through 2021 and now, following this announcement, all Hilton Honors elite nights earned in 2020 will count towards the elite status being earned in 2021 (for 2022) – that’s very good news for Honors members.
It will be interesting to see how other hotel chains respond to this news as Hilton has just set down a big marker. I can’t see Marriott following suit as this isn’t Marriott’s style (and it discontinued its own rollover nights program following the merger with SPG) while IHG may decide to copy Hilton (its elite status isn’t generally worth all that much anyway) but it has been pretty late to the party with just about all of its announcements during the current crisis so I’m not holding my breath…so that leaves Hyatt.
Hyatt has been pretty great at incentivizing World of Hyatt members to book stays and it has offered bonus elite night credits though its co-branded credit cards, but none of these measures do anything to help its members earn status next year so, technically, there’s a chance that Hyatt will consider rolling over elite nights too…but I have my doubts.
Hilton hands out its top-tier status to anyone who holds the Hilton Honors Aspire Credit card while Hyatt has, if anything, made its top-tier status even harder to earn in recent years so I don’t see Hyatt changing tack now. It would be great to see Hyatt offer rollover nights but I don’t expect it to happen.
Bottom Line
The big winners here are Hilton members based outside the United States and who don’t have access to credit cards that offer Hilton Honors status as one of their benefits. With all elite nights earned in 2020 now counting towards status for 2022, Hilton Honors status just got a whole lot easier to earn so there are probably quite a few people now thinking that Diamond status may be achievable next year when, just a few hours ago, that was not much more than a pipe dream.
[…] in July, Hilton announced that all elite nights earned in 2020 will roll over into 2021, and now the hotelier has announced that it is reducing the status qualification requirements for […]