Last week, I wrote a post outlining my plans for airline program status in 2021. In this post, I will take a look at what I am planning for hotel status.
As with my thoughts on airline programs, I am looking at maintaining status in 2021. On top of that, I am also looking at options to improve my status level in the programs. While we don’t know when things in 2021 will improve, I think that setting myself up for some level of normality in 2022 is a worthy goal.
A few programs have announced approaches to status in earning in 2021. For those programs, they have effectively halved the requirements for attaining (and retaining) levels. On the other hand, there are programs that have been silent about what changes we may expect in 2021.
As such, this post will cover my approach based on what has been announced so far. If and when there are further announcements I will update this post to reflect any changes that I may need to make.
Accor Live Limitless (ALL)
I ended 2020 having retained Gold status. In the past, I had attained Platinum status, which I maintained for a few years, prior to dropping to Gold. The good news is that 2021 presents opportunities to regain Platinum status.
There are two parts to my plan to move back to Platinum status
- Accor will be rolling the total Nights and Status Points earned between 1 July and 31 December into 2021
- In addition, will double all Nights and Status Points earned in 2021. This effectively halves the requirements to attain or retain status.
In my case, I will be rolling 10 Nights from 2020 into 2021. Normally, to attain Platinum, one of the requirements is to stay 60 eligible Nights. The rollover will leave me needing 50 Nights. However, as ALL will double all earned nights, I will really only need to stay 25 Nights during the year. That is 2 Nights a month, on average, which would seem to be achievable.
At this point, Diamond status seems a bridge too far.
Hilton Honors
In the case of Hilton Honors, I end 2020 with Diamond Status. As such, the aim for 2021 will be to ensure I retain this status going into 2022.
As with ALL, there are two parts to this:
- Hilton Honors will rollover nights earned in 2020 into 2021
- A halving of status requirements for 2021
As with ALL, I will have a small number of nights rolling over into 2021. In the case of Hilton Honors, I earned a total of 4 nights during 2020. Once this is rolled into 2021, it will leave me requiring 26 more nights in order to retain Diamond status.
World Of Hyatt
The World of Hyatt is a program that I have not used much over the last few years. This is mainly due to a fairly small footprint, which leads to a lack of hotels in some of the places I travel.
However, as with other chains, they are halving the requirements for status qualification during 2021. In addition, through to the end of February, you can earn double nights on stays. Between the two offers, it presents a unique opportunity to build status in the program.
Discovery
As bad as 2020 was, I did manage to go up a level in one program – the Discovery program of the Global Hotel Alliance. While they have not announced any promotions for 2021, I will be looking to maintaining this status.
IHG Rewards and Marriott Bonvoy
At the time of writing, neither IHG Rewards nor Marriott Bonvoy had announced any promotions or altered requirements for 2021. At this point, I will simply be looking at maintaining my current status in these two programs (Spire in the case of IHG, and Gold in the case of Marriott)
