[March 2020 Update] As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread globally, Hilton emailed all members today to officially expand its relief policy worldwide: 2019 status is extended by one year, members who successfully retained status in 2019 get their 2020 status extended by another year, points expiration is paused, and free night certificates are extended.
2019 Status Extension. All members whose 2019 status was scheduled to be downgraded on March 31, 2020—whether it’s Diamond, Gold or Silver—will automatically receive an extension through March 31, 2021.
2020 Status Extension. We are extending your 2020 member status through March 31, 2022. This means you will continue to enjoy all the Diamond, Gold or Silver benefits you have access to today for the next 24 months.
Points Extension. We will pause the expiration of all Points scheduled to expire between now and December 31, 2020.
Weekend Night Rewards Earned on Eligible Hilton Credit Cards. We have extended the expiration date of all unexpired Weekend Night Rewards as of March 11, 2020, and all new ones issued until August 30, 2020, through the end of next summer (August 31, 2021) .
Other than the free night certificate extension, this does not really affect most readers who hold the AMEX Aspire credit card. We are more interested in the two remaining hotel groups. Hyatt and IHG will likely follow soon. IHG free night certificates can currently be extended by six months by phone, and Hyatt’s original policy was already aimed at the Asia-Pacific region, so both will probably announce global relief shortly. For comparison, Marriott made a rather shocking move a few days ago:
Hilton has now followed with its own policy update. See the official Hilton WeChat post. Now Marriott is the only major holdout. Once Marriott follows, most international hotel groups such as Accor, Wyndham, and Kempinski will probably do the same. For US readers who applied for the AMEX Aspire credit card, whether Hilton had this policy or not does not make much difference.
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The Key Condition
Q: Under what criteria are members in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan eligible for the status and points extension policy described in the terms?A: Members whose preferred address in their account profile was set to mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, or Taiwan as of February 19, 2020, are eligible for this protection.
Note that Hilton is using the same account address determination policy as IHG (02/17) and Hyatt (apparently 02/18), so if you really want your Marriott account to be covered by a similar relief policy, it may be necessary to change your address back to your home region as soon as possible.
A small tip for changing your Marriott address: do not use Chrome. Using IE or a similar browser tends to work more smoothly.
Relief Policy Details
Hilton is closely monitoring the situation surrounding the novel coronavirus outbreak. Effective immediately, Hilton Honors will provide status and points extensions to members in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan whose travel plans have been affected by the outbreak:All members who did not meet the requirements to retain status in 2019 and were scheduled to be downgraded on March 31, 2020 will have their current membership level extended through March 31, 2021.
All members who successfully retained or earned elite status (Diamond, Gold, or Silver) in 2019 will have that membership level extended through March 31, 2022.
For all Hilton Honors members in mainland China, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, points will not expire from now through December 31, 2020.
About Hilton Weekend Night Certificates
The relief policy originally did not mention Hilton Weekend Night certificates, so they clearly could not be renewed automatically under that earlier version. That said, the expiration of Weekend Night certificates has not always been enforced very strictly. When booking by phone, agents can sometimes still help even if the certificate has technically expired. YMMV, and this is not something we recommend trying too often. For a guide to using Hilton Weekend Free Night certificates, see the article below:
Summary of Relief Policies
More international airlines and hotel groups may join with similar relief policies, so here is a quick summary of the major ones that matter most to us:
Hotels
My guess is that Marriott is still drafting its announcement. Marriott has more upper-tier and top-tier elites, and generally at a higher level, so this policy is probably more burdensome for Marriott. The Chinese-language messaging from these hotel groups has actually been pretty well done.
- 02/17, IHG, Greater China [Together Through This]
- 02/18, Hyatt, Asia-Pacific [Waiting for Spring]
- 02/19, Hilton, Greater China (this article) [Moving Forward Together]