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The COVID-19 outbreak (SARS-CoV-2) has had a serious impact; see here. Major hotel and airline groups have also rolled out member care policies for the Asia-Pacific or Greater China region, including membership extensions, coupon renewals, non-expiring points, and more. Among them, the four major hotel groups (IHG, Hyatt, Hilton, and Marriott) also launched their own care policies.

A note up front

The outbreak is merciless, but people still care! This article is not meant to encourage anyone to abuse the major hotel groups' care policies. We hope more readers in mainland China will be able to receive the help they truly need.

Many readers in mainland China and Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan, like us, have long used a U.S. address as their billing address while applying for U.S. credit cards, but they live long-term in those regions and have also been affected by this outbreak. Yet because of a system issue, they ultimately may not qualify for the care policies. We hope this article offers some useful reference.

The various care policies

Let's review the hotel groups' care policies first

What if your billing address is not in the relevant region?

I believe many people, like the author, have a billing address in the U.S. but are actually living in mainland China or in Hong Kong/Macau/Taiwan. We contacted customer service and also collected some DP, hoping this will be useful for affected readers:

How eligibility is determined

The qualification logic really depends on the IT setup. There may be several possible scenarios:

  • 1. As long as a billing address in the relevant region appeared before the cutoff date, the member qualifies
  • 2. Only a billing address in the relevant region on the cutoff date counts
  • 3. As long as the billing address was in the relevant region before the system's automatic extension, the member qualifies

The odds of scenario 3 are relatively low, but it cannot be ruled out. So in any case, if you have not changed it yet, it may be worth changing the address back first. Scenarios 1 and 2 both seem possible for now, depending on how each group's IT system enforces the rule.

IHG

IHG was the first foreign hotel group to jump in and roll out a care policy. After asking customer service several times, they clearly said we must wait until February 29 for the system to make its own determination, and no manual changes or adjustments can be made right now. However, some DP show that you may be able to call mainland China customer service for help. I have not tried it myself, so you can try it on your own.

Hyatt

Hyatt is actually the most generous, with coverage extending to the entire Asia-Pacific region, and the way it determines eligibility for Chinese members is also fairly flexible. The following are the rumored eligibility markers, and the credibility is very high. [Officially announced, see here]

Members eligible for the above extension must meet one of the following three conditions: 1. As of February 18, 2020, the address in the guest account is in an Asia-Pacific country or region 2. The account has no address, but the guest language preference is Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, or Korean 3. The account has no address, but the account was registered through the WeChat mini program.

In addition, DP on FlyerTalk show that Hyatt is willing to manually handle cases for readers affected by the outbreak whose addresses are not in Asia-Pacific. Hyatt's approach actually suggests that as long as you are from APAC or your billing address is in APAC, you can qualify for the care policy.

So Hyatt's care policy is relatively easy to get. If you were affected, go ahead and contact customer service!

Hilton

Since many people hold the AMEX Aspire credit card, most probably are not very interested in this. As for the free-night certificate issue, I also mentioned it in the Hilton care-policy article, so if you're interested, just take a look.

Marriott

Marriott said it seems a lot of people have been asking about this problem recently, and the backend team is also looking for a solution and will follow up with a fix in time, hopefully that's true. After searching a few forums, I found that everyone is getting the same reply. So Marriott may well have prepared a Plan B for users who live in China long term but have a foreign billing address. Let's hope Marriott delivers this time!

Wyndham

Wyndham accounts currently do not support changing the billing country. However, you can already status match with Caesars; see here. Plus, Wyndham in North America is really just average overall, so most people do not care that much.

How will hotel policies change?

I think if hotel groups use something like Hyatt's approach as the qualification standard, that may be the most win-win solution:

  • Place of origin is in the covered region
  • Before the cutoff date, the billing address is in the covered region

But for IHG, Hilton, and especially Marriott, whose frequent-traveler base is much larger than Hyatt's, the cost would be much higher. I imagine IHG, Hilton, and Marriott should all have received inquiries about this kind of issue in the past few days; perhaps next week they will roll out corresponding policies.

Will the covered region expand?

Based on the current outbreak trend, that seems quite likely. In particular, the situation in South Korea and Japan is already worse than in some prefecture-level cities in Hubei and in most Chinese provinces, and the number of cases is even several times the combined total of Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan (as of February 22). South Korea is actually smaller than many provinces, so the outbreaks in South Korea and Japan are not looking good at all right now.

Hyatt seems to have realized that the outbreak could expand, so the first care policy it released was for APAC members.

As the outbreak continues to expand, countries or regions in APAC that are more severely affected may well introduce control measures restricting travel and tourism.

Therefore, we speculate that in the future IHG, Hilton, and Marriott may expand their care policies to APAC, especially South Korea and Japan.

If you have a residential or work address in the relevant region, changing it also makes sense.

Note: Changing your billing address may cause you to miss some U.S.-only promotions (for example, high-value credit card signup bonuses）