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Which hotel chains offer lifetime status?

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Lifetime status is a popular perk among the hotel chains.

In general, lifetime status usually requires such a high threshold that you would wonder why such a person would ever want to set foot in another hotel ever again if they did not have to.

Despite that, I thought it was worth running through the various options. I have, without really planning it, hit Lifetime Gold (woo!) with Marriott Bonvoy so it can creep up on you. I may even hit Lifetime Platinum by 2028.

Which hotel chains offer lifetime status?

At present, only Hyatt, Marriott and Hilton offer lifetime status.  Accor Live Limitless, Radisson Rewards and IHG One Rewards do not.

How do you get lifetime status with Hilton Honors?

Hilton Honors launched Lifetime Diamond (top tier) status in 2015.  You can find the – sparse – details in the Hilton Honors rules here – search for the word ‘lifetime’ in your browser.  You need to have been a Diamond member for 10 years, not necessarily consecutive, whilst earning:

  • two million Hilton Honors base points, representing $200,000 of spending OR
  • a whopping 1,000 nights in Hilton properties

Even tougher, the 10 years of Diamond status must be full calendar years. If you earn Diamond status in April 2025, after a very busy first six months of the year, you have the status for the rest of 2025 and all of 2026.  However, only 2026 is a full year and so counts towards the 10 years you require.

How do you get lifetime status with World of Hyatt?

World of Hyatt offers Lifetime Globalist (top tier) status to anyone who has earned 1 million base points.  This would require $200,000 of spending.  Details are here.

There is a good additional perk for Lifetime Globalist members.  Every year, you will receive four Suite Upgrade Awards, a Category 1-7 Free Night Award and, to share with your friends, five Guest of Honor Awards which give the holder Globalist status for a single stay. There is real value here.

How do you get lifetime status with Marriott Bonvoy?

Marriott Bonvoy has three levels of lifetime status:

  • Lifetime Silver Elite – 250 nights plus five years of Silver elite status or higher
  • Lifetime Gold Elite – 400 nights  plus seven years of Gold elite status or higher
  • Lifetime Platinum Elite – 600 nights plus 10 years of Platinum elite status or higher

There is no longer a base points requirement, as there was under the old Marriott Rewards lifetime status criteria.

Interestingly, the 15 free elite night credits you receive each year with the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card cound towards lifetime status. This makes Marriott Bonvoy lifetime status easily the most achievable of the three options here.

Further details can be found on the Marriott Bonvoy site here.

Which hotel chains offer lifetime status?

Or just get yourself the right payment card ….

The rationale for pushing for lifetime status is undermined by the fact that both Marriott and Hilton give out status via UK payment cards.

As you can obtain year-by-year Gold Elite status with Marriott Bonvoy for free with American Express Platinum – for as long as you keep your Platinum card – Lifetime Silver Elite and Lifetime Gold Elite are less valuable than they could be.

You can also achieve Gold Elite status by spending £15,000 per year on the Marriott Bonvoy American Express card.

Similarly, American Express Platinum also comes with Hilton Honors Gold status.  This is not as good as Lifetime Hilton Diamond, of course, but you still get the free breakfast benefit and potentially an upgrade.

You also get free MeliaRewards Gold and Radisson Rewards Premium status with American Express Platinum.  We wrote about the hotel status benefits of the card here.

An even cheaper way to get Hilton Honors Gold status is the new Hilton Honors Plus debit card. Pay just £150 per year for the card and you will get automatic Hilton Honors Gold status – plus a sign-up bonus of 10,000 Hilton Honors points and a debit card with 0% FX fees which earns points on top.

Whose lifetime are we talking about anyway?

To be honest, lifetime status with airline or hotel chains has never appealed to me.  I was happy to accept Marriott Bonvoy Lifetime Gold as a by-product of stays I was doing anyway but I would not have chased it.

That said, Lifetime Platinum is more interesting due to the improved benefits (lounge access, breakfast, guaranteed 4pm check-out) and because I can’t get Platinum via a credit card. If I can hit this in 2028 then I should still have a few years to make use of it!

Ask the former ‘Lifetime Gold’ members of bmi Diamond Club if it was worth spending money chasing that status, which British Airways promptly scrapped after the takeover of British Midland.

There are also a lot of very unhappy ‘nearly’ Lifetime Gold members of British Airways Executive Club. The new target (£550,000 of lifetime NET spend, so nearer to £1 million of headline ticket spend) is unreachable for most. Someone who was halfway to the target and thought they could make it in, say, 10 years will be having a change of heart now that the remaining half of the target is set at £275,000 of net spend (possibly £500,000 of gross spend). British Airways will also be increasing the target on a regular basis.

Even when the company which gave you lifetime status survives, your benefits can be downgraded.  American Airlines added a new status level, Platinum Pro, from 2017.  This pushed Lifetime Platinum status holders down the pecking order for upgrades. My only potential interest in Marriott Bonvoy Lifetime Platinum is the guaranteed benefits and these could be removed at any point, given that Titanium and Ambassador tiers exist above Platinum.

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Want to buy hotel points?

  • Hilton Honors is offering a 100% bonus when you buy points by 29th May 2025. The annual purchase limit is also increased to 240,000 points pre-bonus. Click here to buy.
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Category

British Airways and Avios, Hilton Honors, Marriott Bonvoy, World of Hyatt

Comments (30)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Kowalski says:
    26 Feb26 February 06:15

    I just checked the Marriott App and discovered that I now have Lifetime Platinum status. They haven’t even emailed me to inform/congratulate me about it.

    I’m curious if Lifetime Platinum members get treated any differently to standard Platinum members by hotels in terms of upgrades etc. Or if the hotel can even see the difference on their system (Lifetime Plat vs Plat).

    • Andrew says:
      26 Feb26 February 06:34

      They can see as it’s often mentioned at check-in, but no idea if it helps with upgrades vs standard Platinum.

    • Nick says:
      26 Feb26 February 07:18

      I hit lifetime with Hilton last year and got zero communication as well, not even an email so you’re in good company !

      • daveinitalia says:
        26 Feb26 February 14:28

        I got a pack from Hilton when I hit lifetime diamond, it included a gift and a metal membership card (without expiry date), this was in 2022

    • Phillip says:
      26 Feb26 February 07:28

      I’ve received email confirmation when I hit both lifetime Silver and Gold.

      • Kowalski says:
        26 Feb26 February 09:51

        @Phillip, was this with Marriott? I don’t remember ever receiving anything when I hit lifetime Gold. I’ve got Ambassador also, you’d think my Ambassador might have emailed me about it!

        • Phillip says:
          26 Feb26 February 10:57

          Yes, with Marriott. I’ve got a couple more years before Platinum so I don’t have a data point for that.

  • Ian says:
    26 Feb26 February 07:17

    The only way to find out progress with Hilton is to email them.

    I am well passed the 10 years, but only around 750 or so nights.

    Not sure if I will ever make a thousand.

    Would nerd another double night credit promo or two I think!

    Certainly will never get close to the spend requirements of 2 million base points.

    • Paul says:
      26 Feb26 February 09:06

      It used to be the case that Hilton sent a gift when you hit Lifetime Diamond. I only found out I’d achieved it just before I retired when I received a missive from the Post Office about a mysterious parcel on which I had to pay duty. Turned out to be a pricy pair of Bluetooth headphones and a welcome pack.

      Had I looked I would also have seen it in my Hhonors account.

      A useful perk for our dotage, exec lounge access and free breakfast.

  • Ryan says:
    26 Feb26 February 07:18

    I also have lifetime Gold with Marriott despite not reaching the nights threshold. Difficult to say if it has been awarded due to consecutive years gold instead perhaps?

  • Dirtyneedlebluesky says:
    26 Feb26 February 08:05

    For several years (just better COVID) I keep being being awarded IHG Platinum status despite being nowhere near qualification.

    I assumed (as it keeps being repeated) this might be because of lifetime status butaybe it’s just an admin mistake that I should be thankful for!

    • John says:
      26 Feb26 February 09:00

      You don’t have Ambassador right?

      This also happened to me when I dropped from Spire (which I had been renewing by buying Ambassador, but stopped buying it when I had no IC stays).

      I was renewed at Plat for a while even with <10 IHG nights.

      During COVID I think everyone was renewed, then in 2022 I became Diamond so don't know if it would have continued.

    • pauldb says:
      26 Feb26 February 09:30

      Did you have an IHG credit card in the past? My Platinum keeps getting renewed for that reason and I thought it was a mistake but I got an email on 23/1 saying I was renewed “as a previous IHG One Rewards Credit Cardholder”.
      That has got me my largest ever hotel suite (IC Mauritius) last year and seemingly free AI for 6 people at an Iberostar last week so quite a win.

      • Trickster says:
        26 Feb26 February 15:44

        I too have perpetual IHG platinum despite not holding the credit card for many years. Never seen an email explaining that was why though.

        Very curious about the Iberostar scenario. Did you book directly and get upgraded to AI? Went to an Iberostar on Majorca last year through Jet2, and obviously they wouldn’t recognise IHG status. Was AI anyway, but points would have been nice!

        • pauldb says:
          26 Feb26 February 19:03

          I’d booked direct (half board) so it was a good points haul. They loosely seemed to link the AI to my status but I half think they got confused. We explicitly got an upgrade to sea view x2.

      • Dirtyneedlebluesky says:
        1 Mar1 March 07:14

        I think this could be the reason or connected to it. I indeed did once have an IHG credit card. In all honestly I can’t recall who issued it or what the benefits of it were.

  • Harry Holden says:
    26 Feb26 February 08:26

    Nobody should be chasing lifetime status for anything anymore. As Rob points out, it is far from lifetime, more like “until we move the goalposts” or “take our ball home”.

    If it falls into your lap, embrace it, but only a fool would believe it is really lifetime.

    • Ryan says:
      26 Feb26 February 08:34

      You can apply this logic to any of the loyalty schemes discussed here. Ask anyone who has chased Gold with BA.

    • JDB says:
      26 Feb26 February 08:42

      My Dad was given lifetime AA membership for his 21st birthday in 1948. In the 1980’s the AA wrote to say these memberships were being rescinded but a sharp letter soon put them right and his membership continued until he gave up driving a couple of years ago. None of these companies have any loyalty towards their customers; it’s just a commercial arrangement and should always be seen as such.

      • ken says:
        26 Feb26 February 14:52

        Of course the AA was a mutual until the late 1990’s – and the owners (the customers) didn’t show much loyalty to one another either when offered a windfall.

        No doubt it will be floated back on stock market in next decade once the PE leeches have rinsed either penny out of it.

  • Chris says:
    26 Feb26 February 09:04

    I agree it’s not worth pursuing and an anti climax. I hit Hilton lifetime a few years back and other than maintaining the status and points for as long as they choose to allow you to, it has very little cache or benefit. What is galling is that USA Amex Aspire holders not only receive Diamond as a perk their pathway to Lifetime status appears a lot easier.

  • George K says:
    26 Feb26 February 14:37

    I just wish I wised up to lifetime status earlier so I could have focused my efforts on something that might have stuck for a bit longer than it would have otherwise done so. BMI is a cautionary tale, but there are other examples where lifetimes allowances have been retained which would have made this worthwhile if you didn’t exactly go out of your way to achieve.

    I’m less than a year away from LTP with Marriott and I fully expect that this will translate into a big fat zero in the near future. However, just this once, I’d love to have something stick. Plus, you get some special luggage tags, and I’m a sucker for merch.

    I’m never going to be a ‘million miler’ with any US airlines or even LTG with BA…

  • Max says:
    26 Feb26 February 20:36

    Clearly lack of knowledge claiming that only Marriott, Hyatt and Hilton offer lifetime status. Mentioning Melia Gold status through AMEX but failing to know that Melia offers lifetime status to Platinum status holders.
    Also Strawberry hotels chain offers lifetime status.

    • Rob says:
      26 Feb26 February 20:45

      We only look at the big 6 programmes. Couldn’t care less about the others 🙂 Need to draw the line somewhere.

    • John says:
      26 Feb26 February 21:00

      Melia seems to get disproportionate mention for its size on HFP (including the forums)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

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