Back in February Starwood and Delta introduced ‘Crossover Rewards’, points-earning and effectively bottom-tier elite treatment for the top customers of the other brand. In September they added space available upgrades at the gate for Starwood Platinums.

A few months later — in July — United and Marriott followed with ‘RewardsPlus’, the biggest features of which are United Silver status for Marriott Platinums, and Marriott Gold status for United Golds and above.

With reciprocal status set to expire in early 2014, United announced that the relationship will continue. Effectively, ‘if you like your reciprocal status you can keep your reciprocal status.’

That shouldn’t really come as a surprise, the only thing surprising is that it took this long to get the word out (which suggests that it took this long to get the deal done).

I guess now the only question is… where’s the American-Hilton tie-up?. (Hyatt seems like it would be too small a chain to partner with the world’s largest airline, though certainly in my opinion a better quality choice; IHG Rewards has the size but really has few elite benefits to speak of.)

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