Welcome to August. Seven months down, five to go in 2024. I thought it would be a good day to take a look at my elite status progress report as I think about the rest of 2024.
My Elite Status Progress Report – August 2024
It has been a familiar theme over the last few years, but I find myself behind as we reach the “home stretch” of the year. These last several years I have managed to re-qualify for United Airlines Premier 1K and Worlf of Hyatt Globalist status, but each year I have to wonder–for both hotels and flights–whether loyalty really matters. And every year the question becomes more difficult.
Let’s begin with my flying.
Flying
As of today, I’ve made a decent dent toward the 54 segments and $18,500 in spending I would need to re-qualify for Premier 1K status on United:
Even so, there’s still $7,500 I would need to spend to make Premier 1K again…can I do it? Sure. But is it worthwhile? I don’t know.
I’m not surprised but still disgusted by the constant MileagePlus devaluations on the redemption side. Furthermore, domestic upgrades simply do not happen for me…I fail virtually every time, even when using instruments to upgrade (my latest failure from Burbank to Denver this week using PlusPoints).
That said–and here’s the difficulty–I do end up using all my PlusPoints each year, especially for international upgrades. It is worth thousands of dollars to buy economy or premium economy class tickets and upgrade to business class. This week, my Burbank to Denver upgrade may not have cleared, but my Denver to London upgrade cleared…for my entire family…on a cheap W-fare at the time of booking.
I’ve flown all over the world in the Polaris cabin this year thanks to my PlusPoints. Without those upgrades, I’d be paying higher cash fares, so I do see the PlusPoints as a genuine rebate and benefit to 1K status.
Thus, it is not easy. While it would be liberating to simply fly based on schedule (and I’ve done that quite a bit lately with several flights on American Airlines), the cost of flying business class internationally keeps me on the hamster wheel.
I matched to British Airways Gold status a few months back and have greatly enjoyed oneworld emerald status, which I consider the most valuable airline status in the world. I love having access to the Qantas First lounge and the AA Flagship lounge at LAX, even if I am on a domestic economy class itinerary. I’ve considered switching my loyalty to British Airways nad earning gold status in that program.
But while American does have better food than United, I do prefer the overall United experience much better, especially the app.
Hotels
I’m way behind in Hyatt to the extent that I’d need to do some mattress running in Las Vegas if I really wanted to get up to 60 nights before the end of the year:
Hyatt always treats me well and the Globalist status is simply amazing when I am at places like the Park Hyatt Sydney or Carmel Highlands Inn. I do appreciate the consistent upgrades and breakfast. But is it worthwhile at this point, especially if I have to waste a bunch of money at the Rio in Las Vegas? 39 nights is a ton over the next five months.
I also have Marriott Gold status and InterContinental Ambassador status, not that I put it to much use.
CONCLUSION
I typically write these sorts of posts once a year (my 2022 and 2023 posts here, in case you are interested) and I do think it becomes clearer each year that status is overrated. As for what I’ll do…I suppose if I know me I’ll try for both, but sometimes I wish someone would pull me off the status hamster wheel.
Your problem is you are too honest and respectful to use your status as a travel writer to your advantage. Just be like (season we are in + body of a ship) and grift free rooms for publicity and positive reviews. Sure it’s unethical but beats the hell out of chasing hotel status. And let’s face it, she’s not the only one in the business doing it. Hell you are one of the few not doing it.
It is tempting…but it’s just not the business model I am going for. I stand proudly by reviews that I fund and that are always honest.
I’m about half way to United 1K, just passed Delta Platinum Medallion, and am about half way to Spirit Gold. I will hit Delta Diamond and Spirit Gold. 1K is iffy.
I’m at 23 nights towards the 60 for Hyatt Globalist, but am 69/75 for Marriott Titanium. I should have enough for both, but have been staying in more Hilton and unaffiliated hotels recently.
I agree with you and also do not accept free flights or hotel rooms to keep things unbiased when reviewing.
Good on you Matthew.
It’s one of the many reasons you have my, and many others respect Matt.
I’m always the opposite, I hit Alaska 75K by end of June and am earning less than 10k elite miles the rest of the year
Similarly for Hyatt: 48 nights by end of June, less than 20 for 2nd Half
Seeing as winter prices are cheapest, surprised you don’t get started earlier esp w/ hotels. How close are you to Lifetime Globalist? Maybe just knock that out & not worry about it afterwards
I’ll go Captain Obvious here but why not put some spend on your Hyatt card to boost your nights? I don’t know your spending patterns but between your various businesses I imagine you charge a good bit on your cards.
Matt doesn’t bank with Chase for whatever reason, even though the Hyatt card is a no-brainer for anyone loyal to and spending money at Hyatt. Draw your own conclusions from that.
That is correct – and it was not my choice. Hopefully, that will be resolved over time…
I’m slightly ahead of you and in the same predicament. Clearly the value of 1K has been in decline. And the last two years I lost a lot of Plus Points that expired. The occasional Polaris upgrade, most of my flying is international, has been just enough to keep me hanging around. But each year I’m getting closer to the tipping point. I don’t think I’d lose any sleep if I didn’t qualify. They don’t care. Why should I?
I’m surprised with all this travel you’re only 21 nights in at Hyatt. Do you not usually go out of your way to stay at Hyatts when you travel, like the rest of us Globalists? lol
Yes, I’m way behind…much of my travel has been family travel and church travel this year, plus there were no Hyatts for my week in Tahiti.
I don’t see much value in attaining UA loyalty anymore. PlusPoints may work for some like 1K (useless for Platinum). Upgrades are non existent except the rare Embraer or CRJ upgrade. UA Clubs are a gongshow and crappy food, though not as bad as DL SkyClubs for overcrowding.
I’m slowly making headway towards 1MM then I’ll be a free agent anywhere.
I want to make it to 2MM and eventually 3MM, but I agree that the difference between Plat and 1K is huge. I’ll easily make Plat this year but to stop there would be a huge disappointment and the benefits simply would not be worthwhile.
I spread my eggs across many baskets, and Star Alliance is the only one of the three big alliances where I don’t have any lifetime elite status with lounge access. And it will likely remain that way with Star Alliance since I won’t go out of my way to fly United and I am not going to invest in lifetime elite status with United or any of the other Star Alliance carriers with lifetime elite status after having almost made it there with bmi (until BA ate it).
In terms of hotels, I have IHG Diamond, Hyatt Globalist, Hilton Gold, Choice Gold, Strawberry Platinum, Marriott Platinum, iPrefer Titanium, Accor/ALL Gold, and Best Western Platinum. Meliá and Wyndham status are already back down to nothing for me.
My goodness, that is a lot of hotel status!
Are you staying in two hotels at the same time?
Already made Delta Diamond until 2026. After 15 years in a row as Diamond or 360 this might be the last time I get to this level. Spending $28k per year won’t be easy where most of my flights are now domestic. As for hotels, only have the status from credit cards. Gave up chasing those a few years ago and couldn’t be happier. Most of my hotel stays in the US are business related so breakfasts are covered although I usually don’t eat breakfast. Internationally, more and more I chase local hotels and they usually come with breakfast and no nickel and dime. Interesting enough, due to some changes in my travel pattern, I have 3 stays coming on Four Season properties which will be something I haven’t done in a while.
Very nice. Which FS properties? I am generally very happy with that chain.
It will be all big cities in the US. Nothing exciting but again I am over loyalty so Four Seasons looks good.
You look very handsome Matt
I’ve just got 39 nights with Hyatt so far this year but I’m also looking a bit short of globalist by the end of the year. Personally might be tempted to do a couple of “staycation” at my local Hyatt Place
Are there situations in which I happen to be checked into two or more hotels on the same night or otherwise have overlapping nights? It happens repeatedly, but then those nights are most commonly spread across separate hotel chains as much as I can help it. It works out just fine for me to do that, and it was part of my Globalist doings last year when I “moved into a Hyatt” near a European airport while making various overnight and multi-day jaunts from that European airport “base”.
Choice Gold and BW Platinum just seem to stick no matter what I do and do not do. It’s not from meeting any night stay requirements.
IHG Diamond I got back this year from IHG credit card sign-up this year, and no spend wasn’t required for that Diamond status.
Hilton status is from holding a bank card.
ALL/Accor status was from having spending consolidated to my room bills.
iPrefer Titanium was a sign-up promo offer this summer.
That was a reply to Dave W
And now also Best Western Diamond Select added to the list of currently applicable elite status with hotels. Have Oneworld Emerald, Oneworld Sapphire, Star Gold and more SkyTeam ElitePlus status than useful to me. I’ll probably be adding Norwegian Air elite status in a few days too, but not sure what that will amount to for me unless it works reliably for fast track security on my cheap flights. The status I am enjoying the most is top level elite status in a European rail loyalty program that gives m free same-day changes and lounge access.
…. and to think that nearly a quarter century ago the only travel programs where I had elite status were 3 US airline programs.
Nice. Luckily I’ve benefitted from having Titanium for Life with Marriott, but am about ten nights short of Globalist thanks to my extended stays at Korea and Singapore for work earlier this year (50 nights!!).
I feel like airline status with European carriers is always a bit easier than US carriers. Sure, there are perks of free upgrades with US carriers, but I can do Y for a couple of hours and would prefer a quick bite and a decent place to get some work done at a lounge before a flight, which is why I’ve been keeping FB Plat and LH Hon so far.
I almost never get complimentary upgrades to work for me on domestic flights. Most of my flights are done on tickets purchased within less than 24 hours of travel — and that pretty much means that unless it’s something like a Saturday 6am morning leisure destination flight from a secondary hub airport, I am almost certainly out of luck in terms of a complimentary upgrade — and even on such flights, it’s typically been bupkis in terms of such upgrades for me even when I did have top tier status with AA, DL and UA. So between the lousy upgrade situation, the lounge access situation and the cascading devaluations for miles earned from flying for use to fly, I migrated to programs that worked out better for me in terms of acquiring/retaining elite status and lounge access on the relative cheap. That meant going for BA Silver/Gold, BD Gold (before its demise), AF/KL Gold/Platinum, and A3 Gold.
There are a few status match campaigns around. Personally I think SkyTeam status is a lot more useful than people give it credit for, so I am going to take advantage of the AZ offer in order to retain Elite Plus, and subsequently match back to AF or anyone else who will do it when they move across to *A. There are lots of interesting options within Star so I don’t see much value in the UA programme, but then again they aren’t my local airline.
This has been a crazy good 12 months to play the airline status match game, and the status match fruit tree is still to give more fruit before the season to pick the fruits is over.
I have never before seen it so easy to play this game across all three airline alliances in such a condensed time period as has happened since AF-KL decided to buy a substantial stake in SAS and SAS decided it was going to move over to SkyTeam.
The funny thing is that SK are being super selective in matching- they don’t want anyone coming over from another ST programme (which is also strange as they haven’t joined yet and, even if they don’t want to poach DL flyers, they fly to the likes of BEY and PVG which are SkyTeam hubs and could attract people from those airlines) and they only bother matching two programmes from each of the other two alliances and exclude the likes of AC, TP, A3 and even their neighbours BT!
However, you are absolutely right that there are some good opportunities out there. In addition to the AZ match, I’m thinking of paying for a LATAM one, as it comes with vouchers for transatlantic upgrades and I quite fancy squeezing a week in SAO and Minas Gerais at some point during the European autumn.
Within the last 12 months, SAS was providing status marches to AF/KL elites. It surprised me when it started, and I posted about it on Flyertalk at the time.
Another thing that surprised me is that even with this summer’s status match campaigns, SK are accepting more status matches than their status match form suggests. For example, I have seen them match AA elite status even when the status match request was filed for BA status but only supported with proof of AA status + proof of European citizenship and/or European residency. Maybe those status matches on the basis of AA status were the result of sloppiness on the past of SK as they got hit by a big backlog of requests, but I saw enough of them done that it was surprising.
For the vast majority of frequent flyers, status is now garbage. Matthew is the possible exception since he has to review international business class flights. However, even for Matthew, I would say that hotel loyalty is now garbage.
Ever since the middle of the pandemic, I swore off miles and am now mostly a free agent. It’s so nice to fly on a better schedule with a secondary airline on my list (which is still a major carrier).
I am also trying very hard to burn miles. Just American and Alaska left. United, Delta, and Southwest have small balances. I used to think that it would take many trips to burn off miles but found that maybe 2 international round trip business class tickets will burn my balances off.
That makes no sense to me. Avoiding queues and getting lounge access and free baggage on short haul Y is as valuable today as it has ever been. Long haul business class has obvious benefits, but, whether you are spending your own money or that of your employer, it’s hard to justify paying hundreds extra to fly in a slightly better seat for a couple of hours- the status perks significantly enhance the Y experience.
If flying on cheap fares a lot, the airline status can make quite the big difference in quality of trip. Free checked bags, less airline fussing over cabin baggage, better free seat selection, faster telephone service from the airline when facing schedule disruptions, lounge access, priority security screening, and priority access to overhead bins with earlier boarding — that all does matter to me as a frequent economy class flyer. Complimentary domestic upgrades to business/first class I count out because my chances of getting them are ridiculously low.
On a recent 90-minute flight, Lufthansa upgraded me from my exit row aisle seat to 3A. I was not amused.
I also status matched to get British Airway Executive Gold Status and enjoy the perks you mentioned. I plan to fly a RT business class transatlantic flight before Oct 16th to requalify for 2025. A couple of questions regarding requalifying:
1. On the qualifying BA business class flight do I need to credit the points to my BA Avios Account or can I credit the flights to my AA account to help maintain Executive Platinum status?
2. Any ideas on North America to Europe City Pairs that would have the lowest cost BA qualifying business class fare?
They often have good deals from continental Europe, e.g. they are currently selling Germany to New York and back for less than €2500 in First for early 2025. I think you will need to credit to BA.
For Hyatt status the personal and biz credit cards can be helpful, can easily earn 5-20 or more qualifying nights each year. And for the next 2 months, Hyatt has a promo for 2x qualifying nights (+ some points) at 15 Florida properties, including Hyatt Regency Miami which is dated and scheduled for demolition and rebuilding in the next few years but has a lovely breakfast buffet and is often available at very reasonable rates, probably because it is dated and … Grand Hyatt Tampa Bay is also available at reasonable rates at various times over the next 2 months. (More than 1 way to skin a cat.)
I dropped from 1K to Gold last year and the loss of Plus Points was the biggest downside. But I don’t fly as much anymore so couldn’t justify the spending and flying. Wish UA would make it easier for bigger spenders on their cards a path to 1K.
I switched to Virgin Gold (much easier to obtain with the BOA card hack) and Delta Gold (plus BA Gold through the status match). I’m finding more bang for the buck in mid-level statuses lately.
Mid-level airline status is the sweet spot value-wise. And it’s pretty easy and not necessarily all that expensive if doing a single round-the-world premium cabin ticket every year or two and crediting to non-US airline programs with starts from the low-cost origin points.