Hilton has announced that they are extending free night certificates in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. They have sent out the following email to members with free night certificates:
To recap, free night certificates that were unexpired as of March 11, 2020 and all new ones issued by August 30, 2020 will be valid until August 31, 2021. That’s awesome news for anyone sitting on a free night certificate. It is potentially great news for those with the Hilton Aspire card with an unexpired certificate and an anniversary coming up in the next couple of months since it means that one cardholder will theoretically be able to stack two certificates for a weekend trip. This is an automatic extension — it shouldn’t require any intervention on the part of the certificate holder.
While we haven’t yet heard from Hyatt and IHG regarding the extension of free night certificates, I imagine it’s just a matter of time. I have to imagine that things like this require both technological solutions, testing, and quick training of phone representatives — things that sound easy but in reality take at least a little time. Hopefully we’ll see announcements from Hyatt and IHG in the coming days.
We have added this to our updated resource page with coronavirus cancellation policies.
H/T: Doctor of Credit
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One item covered/taken care of, now what about the additional Aspire benefits that will now go unused due to restrictions in travel such as the $250 resort and airline credits? I had a reservation in place for the former and had numerous flights/trips cancelled where I’d use the latter. Do you see these rolling over/extended as well? If not, then the annual fee was a waste.
Greg and I talked about this on our podcast this past weekend. I’ve now seen a couple of data points of retention offers of $250-$300 (with no spend required) from people who have called in and said they were thinking of canceling. As this drags on, I imagine retention offers will become more standardized and generous, likely across all issuers.
No such luck with Radisson e-certs. Only helping out with certificates which expire in March or April.
My free night cert expired back in January. Is this extended automatically?
Did Marriott announce anything regarding the expiration of the free night certificate? My Free night Marriott certificate is not attached to any reservation and is still set to expire in 3 months. Same for my 7 night package.
How do I check how many certs I have and when they expire? My wife and I have the Aspire card.
Use the chat feature on the Hilton website
I only received email conformation from Hilton concerning this and I think it’s a very generous move on their part! They literally read my mind because I have one that’s expiring in August. I hope Marriott follows suit because I’ve got one certificate that expires this year and highly unlikely it’ll be used considering the current circumstances.
“Additionally, free night certificates — including annual credit card free night certificates, annual choice benefit certificates, and travel package certificates that were scheduled to expire in 2020 will be extended to January 31, 2021.” This is for Marriott.
One thing to note is that if you have a certificate attached to a booking, it won’t be automatically extended. Some folks like to keep their certificates attached to speculative bookings. Hilton confirmed this for me today. Certs attached to bookings will not be extended automatically.
?? So what’s the criteria for such certificate already attached to a booking? What if the country your going to blocks travel? Or quarantines? Will Hilton decide on a case by case basis? Should be an all encompassing extension imo.
I’m so glad that Hilton and Marriott have taken this step, and much like you I’m hoping IHG and Hyatt also follow suit.
We had the perfect trip planned, using all of our free night certs from IHG, Hilton, Marriott and Hyatt – between London, Milan, Florence and Sienna, and had to cancel everything.
Even with the extension, its going to be difficult to recreate the trip, as some of the hotels have gone up in category (Westin Excelsior Florence, and a number of Marriott Properties in London).
At least it gives us some time to figure it out.