As we enter the second half of the year, I stand in a very dangerous position. Will this be the year I lose all my cherished elite status?
My 2022 Midyear Elite Status Progress Report
Here we are are in July and my elite status trackers are not looking promising.
Airline Elite Status – 2022 Midyear Progress Report
Let’s start with United, my primary carrier.
- Premier qualifying points (PQP) – 6,274
- Premier qualifying flights (PQF) – 17
I need 13,500 PQPs and 36 segments to qualify – you could argue I’m almost halfway there, but remember United provided a 3,000 PQP starter bonus this year to 1K members. Plus, I intend to spend most of the summer at home.
Over the first half of the year, particularly in early spring, I did an immense out of travel that I have not written about yet. That includes travel throughout Qatar, Jordan, and Egypt. All flights (and I went back and forth three times) were paid for with miles. While it will be a fascinating trip report later in the year, that trip did not help me much with frequent flyer status.
Recall, I also have 75K Elite status on Air Canada, which I earned by doing a mileage run to Toronto earlier this year. I would love to return to Canada and fly Air Canada again…but there simply isn’t time and I don’t see how I can possibly credit my Star Alliance flying to Air Canada despite my love of Aeroplan when I am so far off with United.
I need 75,000 SQM or 75 SQS, in addition to $9,000 in SQD to keep my 75K status. It won’t happen.
Hotel Elite Status – 2022 Midyear Progress Report
While airline status is important to me, hotel elite status with Hyatt is very important to me. That makes me all the more dismayed that I’m sitting at only 12 Hyatt nights for the year, out of 60 required to maintain Globalist status.
This is going to be a near-impossible burden to overcome. As much as I’d love to take the family to Indonesia or Thailand for a month and take up residence there at a cheap Hyatt, we just don’t have the time. Losing this status will be very hard, as I’ve held it for close to a decade now.
I do have some bookings booked for later in the year…but nothing that will get me close to 60 nights. I know I could get cheap rooms in Las Vegas over the summer and run up my night total that way, but I’m not sure it is worthwhile, as much as I truly appreciate and utilize the complimentary breakfast benefit (though interestingly, I don’t eat breakfast when at home) or suite upgrades.
For example, my wife and I recently attended a wedding in Santa Barbara and spent the night at the Mar Monte Hotel, one of our favorites. Thanks to the breakfast benefit, we spent $85 for breakfast and it was all removed from the bill. But had we not had that benefit, we would have just had coffee and fasted, as we do at home. In other words, I cannot even say the benefit was worth $85.
As I’m not currently a Chase customer, I cannot leverage the World of Hyatt credit card to add to my elite night tally.
I find it a tad ironic that I’ve spent more nights in Four Seasons hotel (close to 20) than in Hyatt hotels in 2022. During my travels earlier in the year I stayed in lovely Four Seasons, Kempinski, and St. Regis hotels, which does help to explain why my Hyatt number is so low.
My Plan For The Rest Of 2022
Due to a number of obligations, I cannot even plan out the rest of my year yet, which may leave me scrambling late in autumn or in December. I’d really like to avoid that.
I thought about taking a Hyatt road trip across America with my family. Wouldn’t it be cool to spend 30 nights in 30 different Hyatt hotels? But due to a trip I have planned in a few weeks, that likely will not work, nor will commitments in California allow me to be away for four consecutive weeks upon my return.
There’s a lot of possibility on my plate, so it could be that I am able to squeak by on both United and Hyatt, but it is not a given and I’m principally opposed to staying hotel rooms I don’t really need (i.e. a Las Vegas run, or something like that).
If it appears, as we approach late October, that I will not re-qualify on United, I plan to do a status match to Alaska Airlines Gold 75K status and focus on keeping (or at least enjoying) oneworld emerald status in 2023.
I was Executive Platinum on American Airlines in 2020-22 and did not get to enjoy oneworld first class lounges around the world, thanks to the pandemic. I view first class lounge access as they key differentiator between oneworld and Star Alliance (or SkyTeam). I’d love to return to the Qantas Lounge in Sydney or the Finnair Platinum Wing in Helsinki. I miss those.
At least with United, my MillionMiler status gives me lifetime Premier Gold status.
CONCLUSION
This has been an odd year of travel so far, with a lot of redmeption bookings and premium hotel stays. I don’t like where I stand on my midyear progress report, though it has been a great year of travel.
At this point, I have little insight as to how the rest of the year will shape up. That doesn’t bode well for my retention of top-tier elite status with either Hyatt or United.
As we enter the second half the year, how is your elite status coming in 2022?
At the outset of the year I wasn’t at all hopeful about retaining my 1K status. But that was before I knew that my family and I would be going to Europe this summer and that I would get to attend a conference in Spain this fall. With a wedding that just fell onto my calendar and the head start that United provided, I just might make 1K lite this year. Now as for next year …
I really hope you are able to retain United and Hyatt status! Switching to Alaska or American does not sound like a very enjoyable plan.
Plus, do you think you will ever reach 2M miles with UA? Are you anywhere close to that? If so, would be stupid to give a bunch of flying to OneWorld airlines when you could be building to that.
I’m at 1.4M on UA. I’ll hit 2MM, but it will take many years, I suspect, since this transpacific mileage runs of yesteryear don’t make any sense anymore and I’m too spoiled to do them in coach! 😉
I chuckled that you’re spoiled out of coach. I dare ask, Matt, are you getting old? It’s ok, it’s happens to the best of us. My priorities shifted when I got a government bureaucrat job and we simply were too busy with school and studies and other boring life stuff (fixing up things around the home) to travel as much.
If I may suggest a last hurrah for you, may I suggest hitting Krakow and visiting Stanislaw Lem’s grave which happens to be close to Kościuszko Mound? There’s also Zakopane which is wonderful.
Come to think of it, perhaps we’ll go there ourselves. Let me know if you want to meet up for us to show you.
Status: My father-in-law continues to “guard” his apartment in Odessa, Ukraine. He’s fine for now and I think this is good for him in that he’s 87 years old and needs a project. Since Ukraine has liberalized travel to the EU. we’ll have him visit Krakow in October and he can take the train and visit us there and we can all enjoy Zakopane together.
All in coach class with my United credit card miles, of course.
While I didn’t visit the grave, stay tuned for a Krakow trip report coming in the weeks ahead.
I’ll look for it. I just hope you didn’t miss anything important.
I will re-qualify for Delta Diamond although I still need to spend $7,000 but that will happen with my business travel schedule. Probably the last time I will be Diamond as my work requires only domestic travel so not enough to get 125k MQMs. I have 30 night already with Hyatt but will be hard to get 30 more. Also, this will be my last year of potentially keeping status with Hyatt since my office moved (we were next to a Grand Hyatt) and we now have a contract with a local boutique hotel. I never eat breakfast at hotels so that perk is useless to me. As for room upgrades, it is nice once a year when I travel with family but not important when I stay for business as I only go to my room to sleep. To be honest, I got almost no upgrades with Delta this year so not worth going after it.
I will play the world’s smallest violin for you.
I do appreciate that Jan! 😉
@ Matthew – I have little doubt you will requalify for both 1K and Globalist. I’ve heard this story too many times before..
I knew you’d say that, but I don’t know how I can come up with 48 Hyatt nights between now and the end of the year. It’s pushing 1/3 nights in a hotel. Not going to happen.
Spend on a Hyatt card?
If you status match to Alaska, will you have access to American lounges for domestic flights?
No.
Why did you boycott Chase?
Let’s just say they boycotted me.
I think I missed that story. Why the chase issue?
What was the stated reason for the shutdown?
Had to do with a chargeback issue on another credit card product. I’ve talked about it briefly before if you search the archives.
Matthew, you look a little bit like Dennis Quaid in that photo.
What difference does it make on UA – you’re probably not getting upgraded often and you already have the million miler for free economy plus. Use the time you save to build value other ways.
For hyatt same thing. Forget the status and stay at an independent hotel, go to the grocery store to get yogurt, cereal etc, or find one with free breakfast. You can probably get two rooms or a suite for the same price by going off the beaten path.
My issue is I threw in the towel with AA in March and decided to switch to UA in April to make a run. I will make it but, most likely, but by the skin of my teeth and only by taking a few flights that I would have otherwise avoided.
I have been using a LOT of redemptions as well to clear out my AA account which is impacting the same as you.
Hyatt is easy, I’m already there, but as a testament to my loyalty to Hyatt I do not even have to be this far along as I also have Lifetime. But I’ll do anything to avoid Marriott and Hilton. I’m at 40 nights with Marriott thus far and, especially after yesterday’s cheap and petty move I could care less if I make Ambassador again.
I have been fortunate to keep my 1K for many years – and it is really worth it as I get a little older and find sitting in econ very difficult particularly on long haul flights – I have been at around 2.5M miles for now over 3 years due to that virus! and it seems very difficult to make that 3M for lifetime 1K – anyway, I am well onto the 1K this year, thanks to the 3ooo bonus – but I also have had 2 European flights cancelled as conferences pulled out – and now one in Taiwan next week that is off because of quarantine restrictions- in the end, I have been upgraded an almost every int flight to Bus – so far and I really struggle to use the points – but I have given away a lot of them to friends who enjoyed int bus travel. While I was a bit coy when United changed the Elite plan to PQP its tuned out very good for me as I am OK with me – but we will see what happens when they raise it again to 18k$. Since I don’t live in a hub, its not difficult for me to get to 36 segs. And since they just changed the expiry data for points I will have a ton of them again next year.
Personally, due to a combination of reduced requirements and strategically chosen booking classes, I am just 438 miles from to renewing my*G status [without even flying outside of Europe!] and I have over ten months until the end of my status year, so I may end up spending a bit more time trying the competition just to make sure that I am not missing out on anything great.
I think that you have no reason to be alarmed- if you have *G status through the lifetime thing, it’s not worth worrying about renewing at UA.
As I have said before, my view of hotel status is that it’s not much use, at least for those of us paying for stays out of our own pockets (I can see the attraction if your employer sends you to spend three months a year in Kentucky/East Germany/Fuzhou and you can then use the status for leisure stays), as most major destinations offer a huge choice of hotel options to suit every taste, budget, and occasion (whereas you will only have a handful of airlines offering just 2-3 classes of service on most city pairs). If anything, I would encourage you to add more variety to the blog by publishing more reviews of mid-range and upscale hotels (as opposed to the Kempinskis of this world); it really is tricky to make sense of many comments on Tripadvisor and the like when looking for somewhere to stay in an unfamiliar city. Notwithstanding the above, I am aiming to obtain meaningful hotel status for the first time ever, as NH have just joined GHA Discovery, and staying a single night in another one of their brands would give me Platinum -> free upgrades at NH.
Didn’t know you were a MillionMiler. just looked up some of your old stories about it. Interesting for newer readers. https://liveandletsfly.com/remembering-my-million-miler-flight-on-united-airlines, https://liveandletsfly.com/love-affair-united-airlines, https://liveandletsfly.com/man-flies-million-miles-for-love/
I will actually hang onto 1K by a decent amount against the reduced qualifications, but without more international paid J travel next year, when the metrics will undoubtedly set back to what they had been, it will be virtually impossible.
“I thought about taking a Hyatt road trip across America with my family. Wouldn’t it be cool to spend 30 nights in 30 different Hyatt hotels?”
No, dude, that doesn’t sound cool. It sounds like the 4th level of hell.
Wouldn’t it just (theoretically) be better to spend 10 nights on a staycation? Then you’e not putting your family through that.
I must agree that it does sound hellish from a cleanliness perspective alone. I hope Hyatt’s are cleaner than other hotels.
I’m in a similar situation, although my airline is American (I fly out of PHL). With the qualification year going to February 2023, I’m pretty confident I will get Platinum Pro with an outside chance of renewing my EXP status. I definitely put value in the priority treatment during IRROPS and love the international OW lounges. Hyatt is another matter when it comes to renewing Globalist. I have LT Titanium with Marriott so I can always fall back on that. But I don’t value the breakfast benefit a ton except when traveling with family and friends.
Would love to know where the travel companies are in their targets for elite members. Will be interesting to see if any of them have promotions such as double elite credit after the summer travel results are in.
I’d trade you… I’ll make glob based on the 30K/month I’m putting on my Hyatt Chase to pay for my mother’s care while she’s dying. Status is nice, family is more important and good health is even more so. I find that even as an explorist, the hotels I frequent treat me very well as a returning guest. I wouldn’t go hopping around the country to make glob, especially with small kids at home and other reasons to say close to home.
Matching status to 75K on AS is fine, but to keep it, you’ll still have to fly the miles and the required segments on AS metal. I had to fly several extra legs to make 100K and it wasn’t fun. Even as a 100K MM buying mid range fares, I’m finding upgrades harder and harder to come by than in years past.
To be clear, you’re speaking about upgrades on Alaska?
Just grin & bear a couple weeks in Excalibur for $20/night for the Hyatt status, after matching to MGM Gold for free parking. Go eat off-strip for $20-30/day… there’s lots of great coffee there too!
“I thought about taking a Hyatt road trip across America with my family. Wouldn’t it be cool to spend 30 nights in 30 different Hyatt hotels?”
As someone who does cross-country road trips frequently with my family (and I love every minute of them), trust me, you DON’T want to do this. Number one, packing up and moving all the crap you need to take when driving with small children is a PITA that you’re going to get tired of after about 3 days. Number two, all day in a car seat is brutal. Sounds like you don’t have the time, anyway, but if you really want to get 30 nights in Hyatts the hard way by driving, you’d be much better off with something like 2 days of driving – 3 nights in one place at a time.
That being said, I’m filing this in the “I’ll believe it when I see it” column. I still don’t think you’re going to be able to resist a December Hyatt mattress run “because suite upgrades and free breakfast” when the chips really are down.
I’m a UA 1K and AA Gold. I don’t know how I got AA Gold, but I’m only planning one flight on them for the rest of the year on a route that UA dropped last year. With UA, I’m at 9137 PQP (including the 3000 PQP bonus) and 30 PQF, so I’ve achieved Platinum for next year and already have enough flights reserved to get to 36 PQF. I don’t do transatlantic or trans-pacific flying; long-haul for me is ORD to LAX or SEA. I also have a significant number of occasions where I’ll be doing out-of-town drives for my job. It’s going to be very close for me to get back to 1K; the last two years I achieved 1K with my second-to-last flight of the year. I’m now looking very seriously about taking that ORD – AZO flight that I’ve avoided the past few years for the points.
I’m now really spoiled with some of the soft product of 1K (boarding during pre-boarding, free drink and/or meal, which I took advantage of when I had to fly SEA – ORD in Q on Thursday), and I realize that it was pandemic-related bonuses that got me there in the first place. If I stay Platinum, I’m going to hate it. It’ll probably drive me to take a transatlantic flight next year for vacation and pay out of pocket for the ticket (and burn up PlusPoints that I can’t use for upgrades right now for reasons that everyone knows; I’m trying, folks, really).
What about Marriott
I forgot I have Plat with Marriott, Gold with Hilton, and Gold with AA.
Marriott is a dumpster fire and increasingly corrupt. Am amazing that people still stay loyal to them.
Is this what is known as a “first world problem”?
Indeed.
It’s matter of priority.
Are you commitments more important than keeping status with Hyatt?
I can’t envision flying or staying in hotel without lounge & Breakfast benefits and upgrades.
While it’s gonna be extremely difficult to requalify for a lot of people, those who manage to do so will be pampered next year due to the far lower number of elite guests
You can still get diamond status with IHG by staying only 15 nights.
I love the Mar Monte $85 breakfast story. A normally ascetic start to the day–unless there’s free food around. As far as just having coffee and fasting to start the day, Bitcoin holders may be adopting this regimen in the not too distant future.
I’m in the same position with Hyatt – loosing Globalist after a decade of status. You’ve already mentioned the cheapest options I could find: Excalibur (but weekend rates are always higher so don’t be overly optimistic with $30 straight through rates), Hyatt Place Bangkok, and Yogyakarta. If there are others let me know. I thought of buying points and staying at a 3500/night hotel but the math, as a cheap option, doesn’t work.
After a few years languishing in Gold, I already hit 1k PQPs this year back in May. I wonder if Global Services will come knocking if I keep up this rate of travel, or if they look at multi year trends?
I’ve had Diamond Status with Wyndham and Choice Hotels as well as A-List with Southwest Airlines in the past. That will not be happening at least for the foreseeable future as I have way more important issues to deal with. Like Cancer and Heart Failure.
Hope your health improves. What you have is not worthy of “greatest enemy” curses.
On the status front, I’m in the same boat you are. Due to wanting to save money for clients, I normally stay at Wyndham or Choice and have Platinum for each, plus I had A-List Preferred on Southwest when I did a lot of flying out of MDW a number of years ago. I gave up WN and MDW during MDW’s nightmarish construction project that still left it with longer lines through Pre-Check than through normal security. Switched to UA and ORD (which is closer to where I live) and don’t regret it.
And speaking of security, when I posted earlier, I missed the one perk of 1K that I love the most: free Clear. Clear plus Pre-Check makes getting through security at ORD in Terminal 1 almost pleasant.
I’m doing a MAN-LHR round trip and MAN-LGW R/T the following day to maintain my Silver Status with BA. I got the email that reduced my Tier Points down to 300. I got the tier points from our R/T LHR-Maldives trip on Sri Lankan business class, but lack the 4 flights on BA. So doing this in one quick trip before Aug 8 to keep Silver for one more year at least.
I am going for United status for the first time this year. I used to travel for work mainly in South APAC so didn’t fly united. However since starting a new job, I have a lot more domestic travel and have had two overseas trips that I was a to take on United. The sky high price of flying right now has accelerated my PQP accrual and I just hit Platinum after starting travel 3 months ago. I have a few more trips and will be just shy of 12k PQP. I think I will definitely make it to 1K this year due to the high price of travel right now.
Hi, Matthew, I’m a few days behind reading your blog due to holiday company. Although my work travel has gone to not much at all, I am not in too bad shape. I also did a trip to Canada to get Areoplan 75K, and sadly have not flown them this year. But, by earning 30K points using their credit card (particularly in the grocery and restaurant bonus categories ), I plan to renew my status.
I leveraged my AA Exec Plat to a status match with United and just secured 1K through the end of 2023!
I have Marriott Platinum secured thanks to the 30 elite nights from a biz and personal CC.
I got Hyatt Globalust through their awesome promotion last year and am really trying to “earn” it this year. Spending on their credit card is essential for my plan.
Without Chase, you really are at a disadvantage. . I am so sorry. I recall the story about the other card and the unscrupulous supplier.
You can do it, though!
Alison
Say what you want about Marriott, they have the only meaningful lifetime status for non-whales.
Come in handy when you have travelled for so many years and are graduating to Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental etc.
And tbh, as a current Globalist, I sometimes feel sad that most of my stays have no meaningful value in the long run.
How are you doing on the UA and Hyatt requalification, Matthew?