Which hotels offer lifetime status on their loyalty programs?

Some hotels offer their guests the chance to retain their loyalty program status for life, sparing the most loyal of guests the anguish of having to requalify after a certain number of years.

So, after the list of airlines offering lifetime status, here’s the list of hotels offering the same thing.

Article summary

Lifetime status with Marriott Bonvoy
Lifetime status with World of Hyatt
Lifetime status on Hilton Honors
How can you boost your progress towards lifetime status?

Today, only 3 of the industry’s major players offer lifetime status: Marriot, Hilton and Hyatt. If you prefer Accor, Radisson or Intercontinental (IHG), you’ll have to requalify every year ad vitam eternam, and will never see your loyalty rewarded over time.

Lifetime status with Marriott Bonvoy

Marriott offers the possibility of retaining the first three status levels of its Marriott Bonvoy program for life: Silver, Gold and Platinum. The Titanium and Ambassador statuses are therefore excluded, but we’ll talk about them later.

To keep your Silver status for life, you must have spent 250 nights in a Marriott hotel and accumulated 5 years of detention of any status in the loyalty program.

To retain Gold status for life, you must have spent 400 nights in a Marriott hotel and accumulated 7 years of Gold or higher status.

To keep your Platinum status for life, you must have spent 600 nights in a Marriott hotel and accumulated 10 years of Platinum or higher status.

Years of status possession do not have to be consecutive.

Some may be surprised that Titanium and Ambassador statuses are not eligible. For the Ambassador, this is easily explained: in addition to a certain number of nights, it requires a minimum amount of spending each year, which is hardly compatible with the criteria for permanent status. But, above all, it’s understandable that a loyalty program doesn’t allow you to keep your highest status for life. In effect, this keeps customers motivated, as they have an interest in remaining loyal, whereas those who obtain the ultimate status for life paradoxically have nothing left to gain, and can therefore test the competition more freely, without the risk of losing what they’ve already acquired.

More surprising is the case of the Titanium, especially as it was possible to obtain it exceptionally one year, when the joint program was set up following Marriott’s takeover of Starwood. Bonus for the best customers at the time of the merger? Certainly, but we’re convinced that sooner or later lifetime Titanium will return. It remains to be seen when.

Lifetime status with World of Hyatt

The only World of Hyatt status that can be retained for life is the highest in the program: “Globalist“.

To obtain it, you’ll need to have acquired 1,000,000 points since you joined, regardless of the number of nights you’ve slept (normally you need 60 nights a year to obtain the Globalist, 30 in 2021 due to the COVID).

Knowing that you earn 5 World of Hyatt points for every dollar spent, that’s a status worth $200,000 (€170,000).

Lifetime status on Hilton Honors

Hilton offers only one lifetime status, Diamond, the highest in the Hilton Honors program.

To achieve this, the following conditions must be met:

To have achieved Diamond status for 10 years, consecutive or not, and one of the following two conditions:
Have spent 1,000 nights in a Hilton Group hotel or
To have accumulated 2,000,000 points.

How can you boost your progress towards lifetime status?

There are ways of boosting the acquisition of status and thus your route to lifelong status, but if you’re French and live in France…you can forget about them.

In fact, all these programs offer co-branded credit cards that give you a certain number of bonus nights each year, or even “automatic” status as long as you keep the card. For example, the Hilton Aspire Card v-($450 annual fee) gives you a Diamond automatically, while the Platinum Card Amex Marriott and the Marriott Bonvoy Brillant Card give their holders an automatic Gold.

But none of this is available in France, which means that most loyalty programs penalize the French and Europeans.

The only exception is the American Express Platinum (the “real” one, not a cobranded one like the Amex Air France Platinum) which gives you automatic status on certain programs like Gold at Hilton, Marriott and Radisson…

Image : liftetime status by PanyaStudio via Shutterstock