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My crazy 2018 loyalty goal

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I’ve learned over the years that goals are integral for me. They help me to push myself to always improve. I set some to challenge my abilities, and some are just fun. My crazy 2018 loyalty goal is one that covers the latter two categories. It will take ingenuity, but its a fun one to have.

My Crazy 2018 Loyalty Goal

I’ve long talked about Lifetime Status with any loyalty program. In fact I posed the Lifetime Hotel Status Conundrum last year when my friend Ed attained lifetime Hyatt Globalist status. Well, with all the changes happening to Marriott and SPG, I feel like I should push for lifetime status now before even more changes. Here’s where I stand at present:

Current Marriott Lifetime Status positions.

Here is what you need with respect to points and elite qualifying nights to achieve various status levels. 

Marriott Lifetime Status thresholds.

You’ll see that based on my current status, I’m 99 nights 662,410 Marriott Points away from attaining Lifetime Platinum Elite.

My strategy toward Lifetime Marriott Platinum Elite

I’m still forming my overall strategy, but the biggest challenge is those 662,410 Marriott Points. Elite Qualifying Nights (EQN) are easy compared. So some options I’m looking at are:

What am I missing?

I realize this is a crazy idea. Its irrational. I get that. But, I suspect it’ll be fun in the process of attempting to get their!

I’m sure that I’m missing some opportunities to generate Marriott Points. So, what am I missing?

The Lifetime Hotel Status Conundrum

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I recently read Ed’s post about finishing off lifetime Hyatt Globalist Status, I felt the need to look again to see where I stood on attaining lifetime Marriott platinum status.

Marriott Lifetime Status

Now the challenge of lifetime Marriott platinum status is that it’s terribly difficult to get, because of the requirements, see below:

Marriott Lifetime Hotel Status

See, not only does it require 775 nights, it also requires having earned 2 million Marriott points. The nights seem like a lot, but really that’s just 10 years of attaining Platinum status. Big deal, right? But 2 million points, that’s a huge challenge. It used to be easy to generate tons of Marriott Rewards points, back when the Mega Bonuses were fairly lucrative, good for 50k points per quarter. But lately, they’ve been very lack luster.

The Points Requirement is like a Dollar Requirement

The points requirement is the hardest one to make, and it really becomes like the Elite Qualifying Dollar (EQD) requirement that American Airlines introduced last year. Its hard to make even having the Marriott Rewards Premier Credit Card (which incidentally has the highest bonus at the moment), which earns 5 points per dollar at Marriott and SPG Hotels. 

As you may have noticed, despite having more than double the necessary nights, I still haven’t even generated enough Marriott Rewards Points for lifetime Silver! 

Possible Paths to Lifetime Hotel Status

At this point, my biggest shortcoming toward status is the Marriott Rewards Points. As I consider my options, I’m reminded of the fact that I resell a fair amount. So in theory, I could put a lot of  spend on my Marriott rewards credit card. The problem is the opportunity cost. Specifically, the card just earns so little. Furthermore, the value of Marriott rewards points, even when you’re talking about 100,000 is still not worth the opportunity cost. In order to get to Lifetime Status at the Platinum level, I would effectively need to put something in the realm of $800,000 spend of my reselling purchases in order to earn 2 million Marriott rewards points! This seems absolutely crazy to me.

In truth I had kind of given up on the near term prospect of lifetime status with Marriott given the Marriott-SPG merger, however Dia’s post about doing the status challenge from Gold to Platinum just really sparked this desire for lifetime status once again in me.

Have you ever sought lifetime hotel status? 

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