Diamond Members: Hilton Offering Roll Over Elite Nights Through End of Year

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Per BlondeBomber on Flyertalk, Hilton is apparently letting Diamond members who have requalified for their elite status already use stays through the end of the year towards 2018 status.

YOU’RE DIAMOND FOR 2017!

NOW STAYS THROUGH DEC. 31 COUNT TOWARDS 2018
For the rest of the year, your stays will count towards your 2018 tier status qualifiction. (sic)

Marriott already offers rollover nights, with the nights earned above those needed to qualify for your status tier giving you a head start on status next year.

Starwood at one time offered something similar as a promotion during the Great Recession. And of course Delta introduced roll over of excess elite qualfiying miles at the same time.

Diamond normally takes 30 stays, 60 nights or 120,000 HHonors Base Points.

I do not ‘get’ actually going out of one’s way to earn Hilton HHonors Diamond status.

  1. It’s super easy to earn with a credit card. For instance, spend $40,000 in a year on the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card and you get Diamond status.

  2. Diamond’s published benefits aren’t materially better than Gold (and you get that status just for having the Citi Hilton HHonors Reserve Card or the Platinum Card by American Express.

Hilton Diamond members are guaranteed club lounge access (at brands where this applies) while Gold members only receive it ‘based on availability’ however I’ve rarely seen Gold members denied lounge access and when they are they get restaurant breakfast.

Hotels are allowed to give Diamond members suite upgrades but they are under no obligation to do so. I have only ever been assigned a suite at the Hilton Colombo.

I’ve only had a couple of Hilton stays this year. I’m a current Gold (by credit crad) so don’t have the rollover offer in my account.

However with the 5000 point Visa bonus stackable with triple points on stays booked through the app it’s a pretty lucrative time to stay with Hilton.

If you do qualify for Diamond based on hotel activity, and have already done so, if you have the option for rollover nights along with current promotions you have a reason to continue staying.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. As a diamond I’ll say this there are three benefits I value:
    1) Guaranteed availability over 48 hours
    2) Award nights available greater than normal
    3) Lounge access guaranteed (although I’m heartened to read above that Golds seem to get this benefit regularly)

  2. Another poster further down claimed to find out it’s a targeted offer. We’ve already requalified but don’t see it – disappointing as we have more stays booked through the end of 2016.

  3. As a Gold member, I never (as in not once ever) got lounge access. I enjoy having it guaranteed as a Diamond member. That said, breakfast as Gold is a terrific benefit. Also, greater award availability is a terrific benefit. I was able to book New Year’s Eve on points at a property that said it was sold out for a cash rate. I also often see premium rooms for fever points than standard rooms.

  4. @Mike
    Check out diamond terms. If a property is oversold by 2% the 48 hr guar for diamonds is void. Not a benefit of any value at all really.

  5. Between this and improving the promo terms halfway through, feels like a bit of desperation…poor Q3 financial results + possibly noticing a defection to a superior MR/SPG offering.

  6. @Gary — LOL. Someone’s really lost! Don’t you realize that this post is yet more evidence of how HHonors has really stepped up their game and is the truly rewarding program that those “in the know” have always known it to be? To turn around and make a statement like “I do not ‘get’ actually going out of one’s way to earn Hilton HHonors Diamond status” is really right on the mark: I agree. You do not ‘get’ it and never have!

    And get this, that disparaging statement is from the same guy who believes that it makes sense to spend $75K on the mediocre Chase Ritz-Carlton visa card just to earn MR Gold!

    If you have not noticed, there is no top elite status worth having at the moment other than HH Diamond, and I said “at the moment” although that’s always been the case simply because things are now as clear as can be with the demise of SPG and HGP proving what I have been saying for a couple of years about how ludicrous it was to put the two subpar programs on a pedestal. At some point you will wake up and smell the coffee.

    For now, you should stop digging and not pontificate about a loyalty program, HHonors, you are clearly not qualified to pontificate about because you know nothing about it. Hilton used to have a rolling tier system that they discontinued. This offer to Diamonds is yet more evidence of the a highly rewarding program doing wonderful stuff for their top loyal members. I have no time to skewer you on your continuing myopic on this because I’ve gotta get ready to fly out this evening for what should be a wonderful trip to Roma, Italia, where I will be staying at the iconic Rome Cavalieri as a HH Diamond, expecting the kind of elite status recognition that top end hotels provide better than lower end ones.

    The oblique kudos from OMAAT the other day and then this one are truly telling! Eat your hearts out.

    G’day!

  7. Worth fixing and repeating: “This offer to Diamonds is yet more evidence of a highly rewarding program doing wonderful stuff for their top loyal members. I have no time to skewer you on your continuing MYOPIA on this…”

    The reason that it is worth repeating is that at a time when WOH! just made it tough for loyal HGP Diamonds to requalify their status and many are bailing out, HHonors just made it easier for their Diamonds to requalify! Now tell me which is the more rewarding or “generous” program.

    Second, and importantly, what has been missed by the self-anointed travel loyalty “analysts” who could not wait to disparage Hilton HHonors Diamond benefits after writing about yet another, is why Hilton did this. Well, I will tell you. Rather than creating another level for top elites who have met the requirement for requalification, HHonors just IMAGINATIVELY came up with a way to keep their Diamond members who’ve already requalified their status staying at Hilton properties. I hope that’s here to stay, but that’s really the story here that so-called “Thought Leader in Travel” missed and then misfired by going on a tangent about demonstrably bogus claims about how HH Diamond is not worth having AFTER writing about yet another reason why HHD is now more than ever the status to have! He even believes that it makes sense to spend $40K on a CC to get HH Diamond, when the program offers 3 — yes, THREE — different ways to earn status that could cost as little as $12K. For $40K, I would qualify for this highly rewarding status three years in a row! Do these folks think before they pontificate?

    Can’t make this stuff up!

    Gotta go…

  8. LOL exactly…there’s no point in any sort of rational discussion with one so dogmatic and irrational that they can’t even comprehend a different POV, even when faced with a litany of facts

  9. The benefit is quite good. I travel extensively in Asia, and with my Gold status, I ALWAYS get upgraded rooms and lounge status in China.

  10. @Darth Chocolate — It’s an outstanding benefit, which I hope HHonors will make permanent because it is truly an imaginative ‘tour de force’ in how to compensate top elites who requalify long before the end of the current status year, to incentivise them to keep staying at Hilton hotels rather than give their business to the competition. SPG created discrete levels that were reached beyond pure plat by spending a preset number of nights (e.g. 75…). HHonors’ benefit starts IMMEDIATELY after one qualifies, so it is on a continuous scale. I would not go for 75 nights, whereas this benefit would keep me staying at Hilton properties all year!

  11. I’ve already qualified for 2017, so this applies to me. Do I need to register or contact them? Or will it just happen automatically? Thanks in advance

  12. What good is this offer if Hilton doesn’t offer it to you. I am a Diamond with 160,000 base points and 86 nights and did not get offered. I called the Diamond desk and they were useless. This just pisses me off and makes me want to switch programs. If they’re gonna offer this to diamonds, they should offer it to all of us. Otherwise, they will lose people like me.

  13. @Michael Wainstein — Chill, man. Virtually every program runs targeted promos. If everyone switched programs every time a promo did not target them, either everyone would be in a constant state of flux, jumping from program to program, or programs would have lost all the members by now.

    Maybe if you tried “struggling” a bit to make status, instead of making it easily with 160K (120K needed) base points and 86 (60 needed) nights, there might be a compelling case for targeting you.

    After my stay at Rome Cavalieri this week, I will just requalify with 120K base points (9 stays and under 40 nights) and will see if I will be targeted, but I won’t sweat it. I am just hoping that HHonors would see this as tremendous benefit that will keep members staying at Hilton hotels (a Good Thing), and make it permanent. Often when a perk is targeted, it means that it’s being beta-tested for suitability for general release…

  14. BTW, I got turned to be an AUTOMATIC “double” complimentary suite upgrade at Rome Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria when I checked in. Check out my preliminary documentation of this out-of-this-world suite upgrade here [ https://goo.gl/9jpp7O ], before I even knew it was a “double” upgrade. If this is the short of elite treatment that makes HHonors a “weak” program, then I am praying for the program to get even weaker 🙂

    G’day from Roma aroma!

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