Hilton Honors has been doing a great job throughout the pandemic with engaging members. In December 2020, Hilton Honors rolled out its latest such initiative, allowing members to gift status to a friend or family member.
This is a reminder that this is your last chance to take advantage of this opportunity. I also wanted to share how eligible members who weren’t emailed about this promotion can still take advantage of it.
Hilton Diamond members can gift status
Hilton Honors is extending a one-time opportunity for all current Hilton Honors Diamond members to gift status to someone else, regardless of their stay activity in 2020:
- Lifetime Diamond members can gift Hilton Honors Diamond status
- Other Diamond members can gift Hilton Honors Gold status
While the ability for Hilton Honors Diamond members to gift status is nothing new, in the past it has required staying a certain number of elite nights. Ordinarily:
- Diamond members can gift someone else Gold status if they earn 60 elite nights in a year
- Diamond members can gift someone else Diamond status if they stay 100 elite nights in a year
Here are the basic things to be aware of with this promotion:
- Members are able to gift status to a friend or family member for one year
- If you earn 60 or 100 elite nights in a year then you’re still able to gift status through that; this is incremental
- You must nominate someone for status by January 31, 2021
Hilton Honors Diamond members can gift status to others
How do you gift Hilton Honors status?
Hilton Honors Diamond members were supposed to receive an email about this offer with everything that’s needed. A specific code is required to gift status to someone else, and then you have to go to one of the following links to actually gift status:
- Link to gift Hilton Honors Diamond status (for lifetime Diamond members)
- Link to gift Hilton Honors Gold status (for other Diamond members)
The strange thing is that while all eligible members should have received codes, it doesn’t seem that actually happened. I’m not sure why, exactly, but fortunately there’s a workaround.
If you didn’t get an email with a unique code, send an email to [email protected], with both your Hilton Honors number and name, and the Hilton Honors number and name of the person you’d like to nominate. In theory you’ll be sent back a code for the upgrade, and hopefully this can be completed before the deadline.
Yes, this even applies to credit card status
If you’re like me and earn Hilton Honors status simply by having the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card (review), then you’re still eligible for this. I love that the card gives you Diamond status just for having it, and now I can make someone else’s travels over the next year better as well.
The truth is that Hilton makes it fairly easy to earn elite status anyway. Hilton offers status through a variety of credit cards, and in particular it’s quite easy to earn Hilton Honors Gold status just for having credit cards. Still, I’ll take it!
Hilton Honors Gold & Diamond members receive a breakfast benefit
Bottom line
Hilton Honors is letting Diamond members give a friend or family status. That’s a nice offer, and also a smart marketing technique — travel will obviously be down over the next year, and someone else newly having status with the Honors program may encourage them to choose Hilton over a competitor.
@ Free “breakfast” for all! Whatever that is these days? FWIW, I’ve had one hotel stay since COVID (about 3 weeks ago). It was at IC Buckhead, and even though I am RA, I was genuinely surprised that I received free hot breakfast (whatever I wanted from the limited, but sufficient, menu). I even had the option to sit in the restaurant (our governor is an idiot) and receive table service. Instead, I called down my order, put on my hazmat suit, and picked it up each morning. It was tasty, but too much food and too much salt. Quarantine has certainly changed my eating habits!
If anyone would like to gift me Diamond status, I would be so very grateful 🙂
Also interested in diamond status for a small fee 😉
What if I have gold right now from the Hilton card? Can i still be gifted diamond form a lifetime diamond member?
It is really annoying (for people who spend $1000s each year for stays) how Hilton gives out so many “undeserved status memberships” (credit card, gift, etc).
@Lucky: Do you know how Hilton (or hotel chains in general) separates between a Diamond member spending $10000 a year vs. a credit card Diamond? Are there internal levels within Silver, Gold, Diamond for upgrades etc.? Is there any interesting public article or discussion around this topic?
I have been a diamond member for the last 5 years and i did not receive this offer, so I contacted the Guest line and got the following reply:
“This promotion is an exclusive offer and is open only to the Honors member who received the email from Hilton Honors™ announcing this promotion. The marketing department uses different techniques and tools in order to select Honors members, to whom the offer will be send. Below are the terms.”
So it is for sure not for everybody, are there others than me not getting this gift Voucher?
@Lucky. I get my diamond status from Aspire card but still haven’t received link for gift status. Do you know who should I check with? I called the agent today and she said there is no such promotion.
Thanks
Diamond and received nothing.
I have the diamond from the aspire card for 2 years. I was able to gift status.
That “concern” is recurrent but does not deserve all the oxygen that it receives. I have been a HHonors Diamond, like, forever and I have seen zero effect on my benefits due to Hilton giving away too many so-called “undeserved status memberships”. In addition, the characterization of status that one gets through a credit card, as a gift, a status match or a challenge as “undeserved” is invalid because despite being an “Aspire Diamond” since 2018, I still made Diamond through both spend and number of nights in 2018 and 2019, and was already at 11 nights in 01/2020 when the pandemic hit. I suspect that Hilton does not consider my Diamond status through the Aspire card as “undeserved.”
The answer to that query is an emphatic “no”. Hilton Honors makes no distinction based on how any of their elite status is earned. The benefits are exactly the same when one attains an elite level irrespective of how one gets there. All Hilton cares about is to attract customers to their hotels, and they believe that “if you give them status they will come.”
@DCS: “In addition, the characterization of status that one gets through a credit card, as a gift, a status match or a challenge as “undeserved” is invalid because despite being an “Aspire Diamond” since 2018, I still made Diamond through both spend and number of nights in 2018 and 2019, and was already at 11 nights in 01/2020 when the pandemic hit.”
Because yet again, DCS has forgotten that it isn’t all about him. (That, or he knows that, but he doesn’t care.)
I gave up trying to understand exactly what beef you have with me, because everyone single one of your detractory statements is increasingly no more than unintelligible gibberish.
FYI: In disputes involving inferential arguments, all that is required to disprove or prove a point is a single instance of an argument’s internal contradiction or inconsistency. Maybe now you understand that it is not always about me but almost always about inference to a larger truth or principle.
Goodbye.
@DCS: “FYI: In disputes involving inferential arguments, all that is required to disprove or prove a point is a single instance of an argument’s internal contradiction or inconsistency. Maybe now you understand that it is not always about me but almost always about inference to a larger truth or principle.”
Or maybe it’s a case of DCS forgetting, yet again, that the plural of anecdote is not data.
I emailed [email protected] 11 days ago and have still not heard back.
I can gift Gold if anyone needs it.
@Jr I’d be very happy to accept the gift!
Are you maybe on flyer talk? We can communicate there easily..
Thanks!
Never received this offer as a diamond.