Status match – Overview

status match

It can take a while until you hold a silver or gold card from a frequent flyer or traveler program, in your hands. Usually, this means that you’ve spent hours on board of an aircraft or several nights at a specific hotel to obtain elite status. Of course, some ways are easier than others. But we can probably arrive at the agreement, that it does demand some effort to be welcomed in the world of frequent traveler benefits.

So, once you achieved your goal and are experiencing free lounge access, priority services, or maybe even your chauffeur service to the aircraft, you can lean back and enjoy, right?

Well… Yes, you can. Or you can make the most out of your new elite status. And what would that be? Exactly: several elite statuses. Once you cleared the first hurdle, your travel life can become much more comfortable. And the magic words are: status match.

Hotels and airlines, but also car rental companies, all want the best paying customers that are out there. And one way to determine who is a good client and who isn’t is looking out for elite status. Most companies will assume that you purchased many tickets/booked many nights at a hotel/rented a lot of cars to obtain your status. Consequently some of them will try to lure you with a shortcut to their own elite status.

While the exact process can differ, the general idea is always the same: you hold some sort of status with one, and another one will match it. If you get a new status without any other requirements, we call it a status match.

If you have to earn a certain amount of miles or hotel stays within a set period to obtain the new status, it is called a status challenge. A status match used to be the standard way of dealing with this topic. But especially airlines tend to switch to status challenges.

Enough talk, here’s an overview of all the possibilities the world of status match/challenge holds for you:

Airlines

Star Alliance

Oneworld

SkyTeam

No alliance

Hotels

Rental Car Companies

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