【Updated 2024.6】Royal Caribbean Crown & Anchor Club, Celebrity Captains Club, and Silversea Venetian Society can now status match with each other. If that’s useful for you, take a look.

About cruises and status matching

We’ve previously covered airline and hotel status match opportunities. With a status match, you can quickly get elite status with another airline or hotel group. Once you have elite status, you can enjoy a variety of extra perks.

Major cruise lines also have loyalty programs, and higher tiers come with some solid benefits. But information on cruise status matching is relatively limited, so today we’ll summarize what’s available.

If you’re not very familiar with cruise travel, or you’re not sure whether cruising is right for you, you can also check out our earlier article:

MSC Cruises

MSC Cruises is the world’s fourth-largest cruise company, with itineraries in 45 countries.

MSC is one of the few cruise companies that directly offers status matching, and it can match all the way up to top-tier Diamond. If you’re planning to sail with them, you should definitely apply for a matched elite status in advance. After a successful match, you can also get an extra 5% off discount code. That said, matching does take some time, so be sure to apply two to three months ahead.

Based on the information shown on the match page, eligible programs include:

  • Cruises: Costa, Crystal, Cunard, Disney Cruise, Carnival, Azamara, Celebrity Cruises, Royal Caribbean, Princess Cruises, and more
  • Hotels: Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, and more
  • Third-party booking platforms: Orbitz, Expedia, and more
  • China-related programs: Fliggy, Jin Jiang, Air China, China Eastern, China Southern, and more

At the moment, the easiest known path is Hilton Diamond, which can match to top-tier MSC Diamond. So if you already have a Hilton Aspire, you can also pick up top-tier MSC status, which is pretty nice. Hyatt Globalist can also match to the top tier. Marriott reportedly cannot match to the highest tier. I’d start with those two confirmed options, then submit any other high-level statuses you have as well.

Benefits by tier are shown below. The 5% discount, onboard credit, priority embarkation/disembarkation, complimentary classes, slippers and bathrobes, and more are all quite decent.

Note that MSC status can be kept for three years. As long as you take one MSC cruise within those three years, you can extend your status again.

Carnival

Strictly speaking, this is more of an opportunity to use status matching to get discounted or even free cruises. If you provide screenshots of elite casino status from certain programs, you may be able to get discounts or even complimentary cruise offers.

If you have elite status with Wyndham Rewards, which you can get just by holding a credit card, you can match to elite Caesars Rewards status. Previously, Hyatt, MGM, and Caesars Rewards could also be matched among each other.

After you submit, you’ll receive offers from time to time. There’s no need to book right away, since the offers may get better later.

Royal Caribbean

If you have MGM status, you can get some extra benefits.

It also appears that Royal Caribbean and Celebrity can match with each other.

Expired

Virgin Voyages

Previously, elite status from other cruise lines could be matched, but the promotion was temporarily suspended on December 31, 2023.

【Expired】Virgin Voyages previously launched a status match offer, and standard elite hotel and airline statuses were eligible. However, you needed to book one cruise for the match to go through, with the cheapest option starting at $99. The promotion deadline was April 26, so if you really wanted it, you had to move quickly.

The matched tiers are shown below.

My take

As you can see, cruise status matching is nowhere near as developed as it is for airlines and hotels. After all, cruising is purely a leisure travel option. You might travel constantly for work, but you’re obviously not going to be on a cruise ship every day. Right now, the best approach is to first use elite hotel status to get MSC status, then try using that MSC status to match into other cruise loyalty programs. Even if a match doesn’t work, if you contact other cruise lines with your elite status and ask for an offer, there’s a good chance you may get deals that ordinary customers can’t access. The same idea applies to hotel, airline, and casino status as well.

If you’re not sure how to phrase the request, just feed the basic details into chat gpt and let AI draft an email asking for perks or benefits for you.