Find out how you can get an elite status fast at luxurious hotels to enjoy tons of lavish perks and benefits. Guaranteed your stay at a hotel will never be the same!
Imagine that you are always warmly welcomed and treated as a VIP every time you come to a luxurious hotel.
Imagine that you always get to enjoy an upgrade to a big-ass suite room, with all the lavish perks and exclusivity that go along with it, without even paying a single extra penny for it.
Sounds really amazing, doesn’t it?
The good thing is that it does not have to stay in your imagination. It can quickly become your reality. The key to that is these two words: ELITE STATUS.
In this post, I would like to reveal to you the best strategies to get an elite status FAST, so that you can get so much more out of your travel.
And guaranteed you will be marveled of how EASY it is to implement these strategies. So without further ado, let’s find out how you can get an elite status FAST at luxurious hotels.
How to get an elite status fast at luxurious hotels
What is an elite status?
Before digging into the strategies, let me take a step back a little bit to explain to you what an elite status is, and why you would want one.
Every luxurious hotel chains such as Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, and Hyatt, have a loyalty program in place that is designed to encourage you as a customer to frequently stay at their hotels. As a reward for their loyalty, these hotels will give you an elite status, and offer you tons of benefits and perks according to their status.
There are different tiers of an elite status within a loyalty program, and each hotel chain obviously has its own tier system and naming – as an example, both Hilton and Marriott choose to have 3-tier system. But Hilton calls their highest elite status as Diamond, while Marriott calls it as Platinum.
Different tier status comes obviously with different benefits. The higher your elite status, the more benefits you will get. And the more frequent you stay, the higher your elite status will be.
Private Water Villa at St. Regis Vommuli Resort, The Maldives. Image courtesy of SPG
So, why would you want an elite status?
Well, simply because it’s totally worth it! In my experience, the benefits and perks that you get from having an elite status will far outweigh the cost to obtain one. A free night at a beach resort in the Maldives, or an upgrade to $5,000-a-night suite room in New York – you can get all of this just by having an elite status.
As you will learn this later on, obtaining an elite status is actually very easy and cheap too. Signing up for a loyalty program would cost you NOTHING, and you obviously don’t want to miss those precious elite points that you can collect anyway every time you stay at a hotel.
Also, you will be surprised about how frequently these hotels launch promotional offers targeting their loyal customers. These offers make it even easier and quicker (thus cheaper) for you to achieve higher elite status.
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How to get the highest elite status quickly?
So, now it’s time to dig into the strategies that you can use to get the highest elite status quickly. The 2 strategies that I will outline further here are (1) Status Challenge; and (2) Status Match.
#1 – Status challenge
The first strategy to get an elite status quickly and easily is through a status challenge.
The status challenge allows you to get an instant elite status through completing a number of stays within a certain period of time.
This is a great way to obtain an elite status, as the number of nights/stays required to complete the challenge are always lower than the normally required amount of night/stays to achieve higher tier.
So, as an example, instead of requiring you to stay 25 nights a year to get a Gold status, with the challenge you only need to complete 5 nights within 3 months.
At the moment, Starwood is offering a fantastic status challenge to fast-track you to the highest elite status.
SPG GOLD OR PLATINUM STATUS CHALLENGE 2018
Starwood is currently offering a status challenge through their loyalty program, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG). Starwood is a collection of luxury hotel brands such as W Hotel, Sheraton, and Westin.
With this challenge, you only need to stay for 9 nights within 3 months at any Starwood properties, in order to get a Gold status. For the Platinum status challenge, you only need to stay 18 nights within 3 months. Upon completion of the challenge, you can even retain the status until 2020!
As a Platinum member at SPG, you will be eligible for a complimentary room upgrade upon availability at all Starwood properties.
You can learn more about the status challenge here. To register for the challenge, you have to make a call to SPG Customer Service. The registration will close very soon on June 30, 2018. So, you better hurry up!
Prior to registering for the challenge, make sure you already have an SPG account. If you haven’t, you can sign up for FREE here.
Suite Room at Hilton Fiji Beach Resort & Spa, Fiji. Image courtesy of Hilton
#2 – Status match
The second strategy to get an elite status fast is through a status match.
The concept of a status match is pretty straightforward. If you hold an elite status at one hotel chain, you can match it to get an elite status at other hotel chains as well.
A status match is super awesome because it provides an opportunity for you to “arbitrage” between different hotels.
Suppose you obtain a Gold status at hotel A. But with this status, you don’t get a room upgrade, while at hotel B you do. You can simply try to match your Gold status from hotel A to hotel B, and stay faithful to hotel B from then on instead.
Here below are some great opportunities for a status match that is currently offered by some hotel chains.
MARRIOTT REWARDS – SPG INSTANT STATUS MATCH
Due to the recent merger between Marriott and Starwood, both hotel chains are offering an instant reciprocal status match.
All you need to do is to link your Marriott Rewards account with your Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) account. By linking both accounts, your elite status will be automatically matched from one to another.
To do that, simply log into either your Marriott Rewards or SPG account, and follow the instruction to link both accounts.
This status match will, however, stop in August 2018, when both programs will be integrated into one loyalty program. So, if you want to make use of this status match, there is unfortunately just a few months left to do that.
HILTON HONORS STATUS MATCH 2018
Hilton is currently offering a status match through their loyalty program, Hilton Honors.
If your status match is approved, you can enjoy the matched status for 90 days. However, this period can be extended, if you are able to complete a small “challenge”.
To extend your matched status until 2020, you need to complete 4 eligible stays for Gold and 8 stays for Diamond status respectively, within 90 days.
Hilton is regarded as one of the hotel chains that offer generous perks, even for their mid-tier elite status holder. Even as a Gold member, you are already eligible for a complimentary room upgrade, free breakfast, and late checkout benefits.
You can register for the status match by filling in this online form. Simply provide your personal details and the status you’re hoping to match. Obviously, you also have to provide proof of your competing elite status, as well as proof of stay within the past 12 months with that hotel chain.
Similar to SPG, make sure you already have a Hilton Honors account prior to registering for the status match. If you haven’t, you can sign up for FREE here.
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So, will you get your elite status any time soon?
Please let me know if this post is helpful for you, and do not hesitate to share your experience.
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Subscribe now to get my quick FREE Travel Checklist.
I will also send you latest updates on travel tips, food and other travel stories from around the world!
Get My Quick FREE Travel Checklist!
Subscribe now to get my quick FREE Travel Checklist.
I will also send you latest updates on travel tips, food and other travel stories from around the world!