Hilton HHonors had a rule against transferring points at death, but in practice allowed it.
Now they’ve made their practice official, updating their terms and conditions to make the ability to transfer points to a designee when you pass official.
Of course, after last year’s devaluation, it shouldn’t be all that hard to use up every last HHonors point long before you die.
Interestingly, last year Delta changed its rules so that miles only expire at death and are no longer transferable. I can’t say that I fully understand the logic of a frequent flyer program’s choice in this regard — I suppose it’s a tradeoff between breakage and encouraging loyalty while a member is alive (to the extent they’re cognizant of a program’s policies), or perhaps these calculations don’t go into a decision to allow transfers, only a decision to disallow them.
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I think I will keep my points for my afterlife. I suspect that Hilton’s air conditioning will be quite useful to me.
That’s why every serious mileage junkie needs to have an excel spreadsheet with login, passwords and mileage balances so survivors can easily access the accounts to use for themselves………..it’s a way that a member can live on with their descendants………..
My advice is to give your child the same first name as yours. In that way you can share status (albeit against the program rules) while still alive. For frequent family travelers, parent could go for high status in Star Alliance and SPG, child for One World and Hyatt. Only downside is that you can’t travel together 🙂
After death, the child can just pick up where their parent left off. And if they too named their child with the same name, we could have some 150 year old platinums out there 😉
I probably shouldn’t mention it, but I will anyway. My wife and I have the same first initial and (obviously?) last name. She travels infrequently for work, but has always been able to use my HHonors # to get benefits – the points post to my account and everything.
I’d feel bad, but we both have Amex Platinum cards anyway, so if they pushed back she’d just create her own account and have Gold anyway. HHonors points are practically worthless at this point, so I won’t really miss the 5000 annual points she posts to my acct.