Some travel companies have extended the membership year for elite travellers, but airline, hotel status waivers shouldn’t be restricted to country of residence.
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Hyatt, others Extend Status Waivers for Coronavirus Country Members
Many hotel chains and airlines have extended the status of elite members residing in countries in the Asia-Pacific region. Some as far as Australia, a country that has not yet seen the widespread expansion of coronavirus, have received waivers for activity through the end of this year.
The reason for the waiver is because those in the region may be restricted from movement for business or leisure travel. It could be next to impossible for Asia-Pacific members to achieve their status requirements especially with some hotels and airlines shutting down service entirely. It’s the right move for chains like Hyatt to keep those members in the fold when their customers won’t otherwise be able to maintain their status.
Waivers Should Extend Globally
There are two cases which suggest that Hyatt and others should extend these waivers globally for the year. The first is for travellers who do not live in the affected regions but travel to them.
For example, last year I spent more than 20 nights in the Asia-Pacific region, many of which were in China and Hong Kong, which could have an effect on my status renewal efforts this year. Many other professionals with business focused in the region but flying from an unaffected region will have this problem but on a far larger scale than my modest personal numbers.
Domestic travel has already shown signs of slowing and some companies are reducing employee travel. For the same reasons as those who are based in Asia-Pacific countries, the ability to maintain or achieve status is diminished even though the United States is not widely affected.
Cost Is Minimal
The cost for Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton are pretty low. Hyatt probably has the highest costs for Globalists with so many of its properties offering some form of free breakfast (Marriott less so), four confirmed suite upgrades for up to seven nights each (Marriott has made using Suite Night Upgrades tougher) and awarding free night certificates for category 1-4 and 1-7 properties.
But true costs are minimal and hard to measure. How many customers will pay for those nights that would have otherwise used a certificate? More than none, less than 100% and there are likely less than 20,000 Globalists worldwide.
Others will rejoice in the relaxed requirements for this (hopefully) one-time event and better brand appreciation really doesn’t hurt. The ad campaign behind it could be really simple too:
“We want our guests to be healthy, so this year if you have to stay home to be healthy, we understand. We welcome you back with open arms at your current status level through the end of next year.”
That’s cheap and easy publicity and for many travellers, it is the right thing to do.
Conclusion
If we believe everything we read (we really shouldn’t), a global slowdown is upon us. That can have a “reset” effect for airlines and hotel chains. If one extends status waivers, more will too and the costs are low. A great manager once told me when I was a pizza shop manager, “Never let your customer taste the competition” because no matter how good your product is, they might not come back.
What do you think? Should airlines and hotel chains extend status waivers for all their customers? What about those with travel to other regions on a case-by-case basis?
Which Hyatt is doing. If you call and ask they will look at your travel and if you do the majority in Asia they will extend your globalist status. But they apparently can’t determine anything but country where you live automatically.
But that will lead to chaos, confusion and resentment; those that know to do it will benefit, those that don’t will lose out. That’s why I prefer the ‘all in’ approach contemplated in the article.
Give it some time, as panic spreads in the US (and travel declines) they will get extended
Sensible.
I tried to get globalist status extended at Hyatt for a year due to this scare.
They said i wasn’t a globalist. Yeah that’s the point. I want it extended to me.
I predict that once things calm down both the hotels and airlines will initiate special challenges to achieve continuing status beyond 2020. Much like you see with status matches. No question that Coronavirus is going to shred the number of elites who can quality. As an example, I am at 40k elite miles so far with AA this year. But I have not a single flight booked or planned going forward and canceled two European trips in March. I am just not traveling until this calms down….unless it’s absolutely necessary/emergency. So, if this goes on through the summer I could be at risk of losing Exec Plat for the first time in decades. If that’s the case it will be interesting to see what they do.
I suspect you’ll see some relaxing of requalification requirements, but you’ll likely have to wait a bit to see just how long this panic lasts. If things blow over by early summer, you might see a global reduction of, say, 10-15 nights for Globalist or 70k instead of 100k EQMs for Exec Plat, with a case-by-case evaluation for an even lower level if your travel history shows frequent travel and/or numerous canceled reservations to areas still affected.