Given there are two months left in 2023, I thought I would take a moment to establish where I’m at and what I need to do as the year closes.

Hotel Elite Status

World of Hyatt Globalist status

I’ll start this with my preferred hotel elite status: Hyatt’s Globalist status. I need 60 nights to secure Globalist status for another year. I’m currently sitting at 56 nights and have actually hovered in this range since mid-summer. This has been intentional because upon hitting 60 nights in a calendar year, in addition to getting Globalist status, Hyatt also deposits a Category 1-7 certificate into your account that expires six months after issuance. I don’t have immediate plans to stay in a Category 6 or 7 hotel, so there is no need to rush it. I can easily obtain the missing nights via credit card spend ($5,000 for two elite nights on the personal card or $10,000 for five elite nights on the business card). I’ll knock this out within the next month.

Going forward, I’ll miss the ability to get easy elite nights from cheap “stays” at Excalibur (in the range of $20/night). If nothing else, it was an effective way to ensure requalification. So what else could be done? Overpaying your income taxes on the business card incurs a 2% fee, which means $200 on $10,000 of spend, and comes with five elite nights. That means an average of $40/night (cheaper than most hotel stays) but it also means you have to live without that $10,000 until you do your taxes. It’s not as cheap or convenient as virtual stays at Excalibur but it might be the next best thing. While you could call around to a bunch of Category 1 hotels and see which would be willing to check you in virtually, it’s a lot of effort and the chance something goes wrong (e.g. someone else working at the front desk who doesn’t know the arrangement) feels too high to rely on this as a viable alternative.

Marriott Titanium status

I’ve already secured Marriott Titanium status. I’m sitting at 83 elite nights for this year. While it sounds quite lofty, 30 nights came from having a personal credit card (the Ritz Carlton card) and the business card. An additional 10 elite nights came from selections for staying 50 and 75 nights in a year. That means only 40 nights were from stays, and many of those came from double elite night promotions offered earlier in the year.

It might sound strange that I accept extra elite nights, but I’m trying to push my way to lifetime Platinum status. Lifetime Platinum status requires 600 nights plus 10 years of Platinum status or higher. I’m sitting at 520 nights (will be 524 by the end of the year) and nine years of elite status. I will reach ten years next year and then would “only” need 76 nights to achieve the milestone. It will be helpful if they have another double elite night promotion, but I would like to hit lifetime Platinum next year. Once I hit that lifetime status, I can also drop my Marriott business card and save myself the $125 annual fee. It’s not worth trying to hit Titanium status at 75 nights when I would have Platinum status automatically at 0 nights.

Hilton Diamond and IHG Platinum status

I have Hilton Diamond status and IHG Platinum status from the Hilton Aspire and IHG Select card, respectively. Both programs end up being good backups in the event I can’t stay at a Hyatt or Marriott.

Airline Elite Status

Delta Airlines Platinum status

With much said lately about Delta’s changing elite program, I still have Platinum status secured for next year. I’m projected to end the year with 163k MQM. After rollover occurs at the beginning of 2024, I’m looking at 88k MQM that could be converted to $8800 MQD. I have two Delta credit cards (I recently signed up for the Delta Business Platinum as a hedge in case things don’t work out with the status matches I’ve done) that would provide $5000 MQD in next year’s program. Combined, that’s instant Gold status, plus I’d only be $1200 MQD (or $12,000 of credit card spend) away from Platinum status. Even if I am undecided about the future of the program, that’s easily achievable. While I could knock the requirement out now with $25,000 in credit card spend, why not wait for next year and spend half that amount?

American Airlines Platinum Pro

As mentioned in a prior post, I leveraged my Hyatt Globalist status into AA Platinum Pro status. They give you the status for four months on a trial basis and during that time they expect you to earn one third of the normal requirements of Platinum Pro to extend it for another four months, then rinse and repeat until the whole year completes. So for the first four months, I’m sitting at 24k Loyalty Points earned out of the 42k LP needed. AA counts activity on its shopping portals towards elite status and I’m hoping that there are some good mileage bonuses on Black Friday purchases I would have made anyways. While I have some work to do here, I’m in good standings.

JetBlue Mosaic 3 status

I applied for the JetBlue status match using my Delta Platinum status and was given Mosaic 3 status with the opportunity to extend it if I have a JetBlue credit card. Thankfully, I already have the JetBlue Plus card so I should be set on status for this year and next. I would like to take a trip on JetBlue and make use of those Mint upgrade certificates they gave, so hopefully I find a chance to do that soon.

United Silver status

This is essentially a giveaway status as it comes from a cross-promotion with Marriott Titanium status. I really just view this as the ability to avoid paying preferred seat fees and baggage fees if I fly them. It’s certainly nice to have as a backup but United isn’t my preferred airline and I don’t find myself flying them all that often.

Status I won’t be keeping

I had both Singapore Krisflyer Elite Gold and Finnair Platinum status from promotions offered during the pandemic. In both cases, I haven’t done enough to maintain those statuses. I will miss having both for easy access to United and American lounges (including the more premium oneworld first class lounges), but I don’t have the bandwidth to maintain them. That being said, I believe Finnair still provides soft landings to a lower tier, so I should still have Finnair Gold status, but given my drive for AA Platinum Pro, I’m not sure that’s necessary in my case.

Conclusion

From where I’m standing now, I’m really only needing to clean up some loose ends with Hyatt and American Airlines. With Hyatt, I’ll likely get there with credit card spend. For American Airlines, I’m hoping for some good deals on their shopping portals or with their SimplyMiles program (akin to Amex Offers). If that fails, the backup will likely be more credit card spend, but I would prefer to keep that at a minimum.

If you’re chasing elite status, are you prepared for the end of 2023?