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Earning Hotel Lifetime Elite Status - Marriott, Starwood and Hyatt

Brian Kelly
Articles
Brian Kelly is the CEO of The Points Guy. Need I say more?
Dec. 20, 2012
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3 min read
Earning Hotel Lifetime Elite Status - Marriott, Starwood and Hyatt
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Marriott recently announced some new changes to their lifetime elite status program on the Marriott Rewards Insider blog, including reduced night requirements for all three levels and signalling a new era in which they'll be promoting these benefits rather than leaving them largely unpublished.

MARRIOTT

The new requirements for earning Lifetime Status with Marriott are as follows:

Lifetime Silver:

  • 250 nights at Marriott properties (previously 600 nights)
  • 1,200,000 Marriott Rewards points earned

Lifetime Gold:

  • 500 nights at Marriott properties (previously 800 nights)
  • 1,600,000 Marriott Rewards points earned

Lifetime Platinum:

  • 750 nights at Marriott properties (previously 1,100 nights)
  • 2,000,000 Marriott Rewards points earned

Marriott also used to require that you have elite status for at least 12 years in order to earn lifetime status, no matter how many nights or points you had racked up, but that requirement is gone too.

At a time when many programs are making it harder and harder to earn and maintain elite status, it's encouraging to see Marriott relaxing some of their requirements and bringing more loyal customers into the fray.

STARWOOD

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Lifetime elite status is a little-discussed facet of the hotel loyalty program world, but Marriott isn't the only brand that offers it. Among the other enhancements to Starwood elite status this year, Starwood also introduced lifetime elite status, and because of all my travel, I'm already a lifetime gold.

Here are the requirements of lifetime status with Starwood:

Lifetime Gold: 250 eligible nights and 5 years of SPG elite status.

Lifetime Platinum: 500 eligible nights and 10 years of Platinum status.

The email welcoming to SPG Lifetime Gold Status.
The email welcoming to SPG Lifetime Gold Status.

Hyatt Lifetime Diamond Status

The information for Hyatt's Lifetime Diamond Status isn't published on their website, however word in loyalty circles is that you must have earned 1,000,000 base points and have a Gold Passport account for 10 years. To find out how many base points you've earned you must call Hyatt to find out as the website only shows Lifetime points which include elite bonuses, credit card points, etc., which don't count as base points. Just note, a major negative aspect of this is that if you credit your stays to airlines instead of Hyatt, you wouldn't be earning Hyatt base points so those stays wouldn't count. Hyatt Gold Passport members earn 5 base points per dollar, so in order to earn 1,000,000 base points you would have to have spent $200,000. You should get lifetime status with an outlay like that!
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