A few days after I wrote my comparison post regarding the U.S. and Canadian American Express Membership Rewards program, and I mentioned that we rarely see transfer bonuses in Canada as we do in the U.S., in pops a 30% hotel transfer bonus. This offer runs from September 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
For some parts of the world, travel seems to be opening up, especially in the United States. However, in other places like Canada, travel restrictions continue, and are as strict as they have been. So many people have been unable to generate activity on some of their hotel loyalty programs to keep their accounts active.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
I’m not sure about everyone, but when I start travelling again, it will most likely be road trips within Canada ONLY for the foresable future. For this reason, I have been tracking hotel points expiry policies, elite status extensions and other relevant information more closely than airline industry.
I still hope to see hotels being used for multi-purposes, not just for tourism. For example, government buying up rooms to house certain people temporarily to alleviate the hospitals. Marriott has introduced a work anywhere program.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
Hotel chains have done a great job at extending elite status memberships, as well as points expiry policies.
Below is a list of extension offers by programs more relevant to Canadians.
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
Things have evolved quite a bit since March 2020 when the coronavirus lockdowns hit the travel industry. As time went on, airline and hotel program made adjustments to stay afloat. They also tried to make things more generous for customers, while trying to juggle their balance sheet.
Many people would argue that airlines would get government bailouts anyway, so all they really need to do is sit back and relax. Whether true or not, today’s post focuses on extensions given to member account balances. Several of those extensions have now expired, while some programs made some more permanent changes to their expiry policies.
Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, airline and hotel loyalty programs have paused/extended expiry policies to their miles and points. Today’s post is a current snapshot of the state of these programs.
Please note that we ongoingly update our COVID-19 updates page as well for most up-to-date information.
IHG is the latest hotel chain to extend its elite statuses and expiry policy, which rounds out the majority of the major hotel chains. Note that we also have an ongoingly updated page found on our menu bar.
Below is a current recap of the elite status and points expiry extensions offer by some of the major hotel chains.
Best Western
Loyalty programs across the board have implemented temporary solutions to deal with any COVID-19 related matters. Below is a list of hyperlinks to useful information. I also included a small blurb for each company that may be more commonly relevant.
I tried to include companies more relevant to Canadians, but please let us know in the comment section below if you see any other links that we can add to the list (in alphabetical order).
Hilton Honors added a new option to redeem their points with Lyft. This is only available in Canada and the U.S.
A couple of days ago, we wrote about Best Western, where we mentioned that there are very few hotel chains left in Canada that are affiliated with a credit card company. Another one of these rare hotel chains Hilton, which uses Hilton HHonors as their loyalty program. HHonors ties to Canada is being a transfer partner of the American Express Membership Rewards program, which we will explain more below. Furthermore, it has been over 3 years since I last updated, so this post was due for an refresh.