HIlton Honors have launched one of the best hotel loyalty programme campaigns I have seen for some time. One of the most potent features, the one mentioned in the headline, being a cool result of threading the eye of many needles.

Elite status extension

All Honors members will have their status prolonged by an extra year, so until March 2022 at the earliest. Previously a status extension was granted until 2021 if you had qualified for your status in 2018-2019 but this

Most hotels and airlines are doing a status extension of some kind, so this part is more or less as expected at this stage.

All points expirations extended until next year

Good news if you had points due to expire. All points will have an earliest expiry of 31st December 2021, so a minimum of one year's extension.

50% reduction on all Status Qualification Requirements.

This applies to all the various qualification criteria: Stays, Nights and Base Points. As long as you hit any of the three then you will earn the status for the rest of the year plus the whole of the following year, plus until March of the year after. So for instance if you qualify during 2021 then your status will be valid all the way through to March 2023.

Normally to qualify you need to trigger any one of the following:

• Silver — 4 stays or 10 nights per year
• Gold — 20 stays, 40 nights or 75 000 base points
• Diamond — 30 stays, 60 nights or 120 000 base points.

But the new requirements for 2021 are:

• Silver — 2 stays or 5 nights per year
• Gold — 10 stays, 20 nights or 37 500 base points
• Diamond — 15 stays, 30 nights or 60 000 base points.

Lowering Milestone Bonus Night Threshold

Given the adjustments to the new tier thresholds, the Milestone Bonus credits are also being lowered to begin at 20 nights in 2021. Note that 2020 rolled over elite credits will not count for Milestone Bonuses.

Gold members will earn 10,000 Bonus Points for 20 nights stayed and will continue earning the additional 10,000 Bonus Points every 10 nights after that during the 2021 calendar year.

If you hit 60 nights, you get an additional Milestone Bonus of 30,000 Bonus Points.

Reducing Gifting Status Night Threshold

Diamond members are normally able to gift status to friends and family – Gold at 60 nights and Diamond at 100 nights.

For 2021 this will change to 30 nights to gift Gold and 60 nights to gift Diamond.

How to get Diamond with 15 stays

The most important thing to note is this must be done before 31st December 2020. This is because Hilton have a Double Rewards promotion running for the rest of the year whereby you can earn double points and double night credits. So in order to register 30 nights of credit, you only need to stay 15 nights.

The next part of the puzzle is that night credits from 2020 will be rolled over into 2021. So those 30 nights of credits from 31st December 2020 will continue to be counted in January 2021. Note that to qualify for Diamond in 2021 you only need 30 nights. So while 30 nights won't even qualifying you for Gold on 31st December, it will automatically trigger Diamond on 1st January 2021.

Since you normally qualify for status in the year you earn it (2021), plus the following year (2022), plus another 3 months (March 2023), for a minimum of 27 months.

Bottom Line

This is a really fantastic promotion by Hilton Honors, probably the best of any hotel loyalty programme currently, and understandably so given the situation we find ourselves. Being able to earn Diamond from scratch with so few nights will surely be a great way to pick up good loyalty amongst members right now. Sure, the programme will find itself with an increased amount of Diamond members for the next could of years, but as early 2021 looks suppressed still, I don't expect any significant dilution of benefits in the short term.