Unless you travel a lot, getting status in a hotel loyalty can seem very daunting with the number of nights required to earn it. However, there are a number of ways you can do this almost instantly by “buying” it. Once you have status in one hotel scheme, many of the other will match it, even if only for a few months. So you should try and time it for when you will get the most benefit. For me, Hilton offers the best benefits at the middle ‘Gold’ tier with free breakfast and upgrades. This can save a lot of money, especially in the US where breakfast can be very pricey at luxury hotels.
In this post:
What hotel schemes can you buy loyalty in?
IHG – Intercontinental
There are two ways to get status in InterContinental hotels. First, you could take out the IHG credit card. You will earn 1 point for every £1 you spend in the UK, 2 points for every £1 you spend in an IHG location in the UK, and 2 points for every £1 you spend abroad. Most importantly you get Gold Elite status when you open your account and the card is free.
The second option is to join the Intercontinental Ambassador Club which costs $200 and gives you the higher Platinum Elite tier in IHG’s Rewards Club.
You also get:
So what do you get?
• Guaranteed one category room upgrade
• Extended 4 pm check-out
• Complimentary weekend night
• Dedicated check-in area
• Welcome fruit platter for every stay
• Complimentary mineral water
• Complimentary Internet
• Up to US $20 restaurants & bars credit for every stay (can be used in certain bars/restaurants and minibar)
• Ambassador Benefits Guarantee to ensure you make the most out of every stay
The main draw for me is the free night certificate. If you pay for one weekend night, you can use the certificate to get the other night free. This can usually mean the membership pays for itself and all the other perks are free.
You can find more details and join here.
Accor – Sofitel, Pullman, Raffles, Fairmont
Accor offer a way to effectively buy status at Le Club Gold level through their Ibis business card. Although most of the perks related to the business card are only for stays at Ibis hotels (which I am guessing most TLFL readers won’t often stay in) the status can be used at any Accor hotel. Accor hotels include some upmarket brands such as Sofitel, Pullman, MGallery, Rixos, Raffles, Fairmont, Banyan Tree, Mercure and Novotel. The other perks of the business card include 10% off room rates for 2 rooms per booking and 10% off food and drink both at Ibis hotels.
The Accor Gold status gets you:
- up to 10% off room rates
- free internet
- free local calls
- 10% off spa treatments at Fairmont, 20% at Swissotel
- Room upgrade subject to availability
- Free newspaper
- early check-in or late checkout (subject to availability)
- welcome drink
- welcome gift
The Ibis business card costs £65 (don’t select business traveller if it’s for personal use) so whether it is worth buying depends on how often you will stay at an Accor hotel. Getting an upgrade a few times and some free drinks are probably worth it if you will make more than a couple of stays at the Accor properties in a year.
You can find more details and join here.
Marriott and Hilton
You can buy Marriott (trial period) and Hilton Gold status by buying a Founders card. This comes with a number of travel benefits including Marriott Gold Status. Founders cards cost from $295 a year when then is an offer on. You can find out more here.
A better but much more expensive option would be the American Express Platinum card. This comes with full Hilton Honors Gold, Shangri-La Golden Circle and Marriot Bonvoy Gold Elite Status. The Amex now has a whopping £575 fee but it does include a lot of other benefits such as travel insurance and a Priority Pass card.
Status matching
Many hotels will offer a status match to a similar tier in their scheme, although nowadays this nearly always involves a challenge to complete. The good thing is that you normally get 3 months to complete the challenge and during that period you have the matched tier in the other scheme for those 3 months. A good resource for finding out the latest status matches on offer is the website Status Matcher.
The two main status matches that are usually offered year-round are Hilton and Marriott.
Hilton
Hilton recently changed their status match slightly. You can now only match to Gold initially for the 90 day challenge period. If you stay 10 nights within your 90 day trial period, you then keep Gold status until 31 March 2021. If you manage 18 nights during the trial then you get Diamond status at that point until 31 March 2021.
You can apply for the status match here.
Marriott
Marriott have a slightly different offer. You have a choice of either completing:
- 8 nights for Gold
- 16 nights for Platinum
You have to achieve 16 Nights in three months providing you register before 31 December 2019. One thing to consider is that if you register after the 1st of a month you get the rest of that month + the 3 months, so try to register on the 2nd of the month for the maximum time!
To get the same deal you need to contact Marriott Bonvoy directly. The contacts are listed on this page.
1 comment
I have the Ibis Business card ( I haven’t once stayed at an Ibis) which I bought specifically for the Accor Gold Status. I actually brought it based on a previous article by Michele! We typically travel once a month as purely leisure travellers ( it’s our passion and where most our disposable income goes) and like having a large number of hotel chains we can make use off instead of being stuck with one. They’ve added some more to the portfolio so there’s 33 chains in total to pick from now so we can always match price & quality to a particular trips budget. I’d say we are higher mid-end/ Lowest Luxury upwards with the odd Super Lux thrown in.
Tbh it paid for itself on the first stay. Across a lot of the brands the rooms tend to have a large leap in price at some point. There will typically be free breakfast and/or free minibar thrown in with other perks( free spa/ gym use etc) in the highest ( sometimes highest few) category but there is a marked price difference between those rooms & the preceding room category. We have become pass masters at researching the hotel and rates and will book into the grade below and then get upgraded to the one with all the goodies.
There are also member only sales and pre sales on these for Gold and above. They regularly feature 20-30% and sometimes up to 40% discounts.
In 8 days we will be off to Hong Kong and then Thailand. For HK we will get free breakfast, access to an executive lounge which gives free soft drinks, wine, beer & basic spirits, afternoon tea & evening canapes from 10:00 – 20:00 at the Novotel right in the CBD( not the most glamorous brand but it’s prime location, recently got a refurb’ & has a pool) & be upgraded from an executive room to a one bedroom suite which in HK is important as it’s quite like New York for room sizes. At the Banyan Tree in Bangkok we were contacted within 24hrs of booking and offered a whopping 4 room grade upgrade for another £115 for the two of us for 5 days AND will still be eligible for upgrade upon arrival so have paid for an entry level suite and will be getting one 5 tiers above which is a price difference higher than the original booking.
Strictly speaking upgrades are room-room and suite-suite and it’s not guaranteed but my success rate is 90% on upgrades, they have crossed from room-suite if that’s the next highest tier and on one stay the staff showed me their reservations system, why they couldn’t( totally full) and offered 100E per day spend including in the spa to make up for it. The other was at an Adagio property which was a total write off and I ended up getting refunded along with compensation anyway. There’s also a dedicated check-in zone at each hotel across all brands( or there should be) and that can be a lifesaver if your flight gets you there in the morning/ lunchtime along with the early check-in or check out you get for free.
DOWNSIDES: Their IT is terrible, the website is unintelligent, often has broken links inside it and we have found that prices have appeared cheaper when not logged in against discounted rates for members but with screenshots of this and an email they are good at then discounting the lower rate by 10-20% to apologise( I think the staff know themselves the website is broken)
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