Hilton Honors offers free 90 days of status to anyone with current elite status in a major hotel program. Historically they have required that the member have stayed at a hotel at least once in the last 24 months.

Once you’ve matched, f you stay with them you can keep or upgrade the status – valid for nearly two full years at this point. The offer has been available for some time but it’s just been changed, so that status can last through March 2026 even though the Hilton site still lists 2025.

• Receive Gold status for 90 days
  
• Stay 8 nights during that period, keep Gold through March 2026
  
• Stay 14 nights during that period, receive Diamond through March 2026

This offer is available to current elite members of the following programs (and under the terms they won’t match to ‘other’):

In order to enroll in the match offer you must be a current member of the Hilton program and cannot already have Gold or Diamond status. You can only take advantage of this offer once. It takes them a shocking ‘7 – 12 business days’ to process status upgrades, and officially reward stays won’t count towards the 8 or 14 nights to keep status, even though reward stays count towards regular status-earning.

You want to be a Hilton program member for free wifi. You want to be at least a Silver for 5th night free on award redemptions. And Golds avoid the worst rooms in the hotel (‘space-available room upgrades’) and receive breakfast or a food and beverage credit depending on where the hotel is located.

Hilton Honors does not guarantee late check-out. If the hotel has a lounge, Diamond is better for access to that. At most U.S. properties Diamond upgrades aren’t materially better than those offered to Gold. If you travel in Asia you’ll do better of course.

With the elimination of actual free breakfast as a benefit for U.S. properties, replaced by a food and beverage credit that doesn’t usually cover the cost of breakfast (but can be used for other things – they should have given an either/or choice like my dorm dining plan in college), I view Honors as the weakest major hotel loyalty program.

Still, it’s always better to have status than not to have status. I have Gold from Amex Platinum, and the easiest path to Diamond is the premium co-brand Hilton Amex that bundles it. In 2019 they were testing confirmed suite upgrades as a benefit, but did upgrades to non-suites instead. Years before that they were contemplating a higher elite tier with better benefits (since their top tier is available via credit card with no spending requirement even) but that too stalled.