Comparing Hotel Loyalty Program Milestone Rewards

Hotels use milestone rewards to incentivize members to engage with the hotel’s loyalty program.

With milestone rewards, you receive additional benefits, beyond the normal elite status benefits, when you reach specific elite qualifying night thresholds in a calendar year.

In fact, even once you reach the highest elite status level, some hotel programs will keep rewarding you as you continue to stay loyal to the hotel brand.

In this article, we’ll compare the four major hotel loyalty programs and look at which one comes with the best milestone rewards.

What Hotel Brands Offer Milestone Rewards?

For the purpose of this article, we’ll explore the four major hotel loyalty programs:

• Marriott Bonvoy
• Hilton Honors
• World of Hyatt
• IHG One Rewards

Each of these four programs has some version of milestone rewards; however, some are much stronger than others.

World of Hyatt in particular has a strong Milestone Rewards program. Through it, you can earn bonus points, Free Night Awards, Suite Upgrade Awards, and so much more.

Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards start at 20 elite qualifying nights and go all the way to 150 elite qualifying nights.

IHG One Rewards Milestone Rewards offer a choice of bonus points, Food and Beverage Rewards, Confirmable Suite Upgrades, or an annual lounge membership depending on the elite qualifying night milestone you reach.

With IHG, Milestone Rewards start after you earn 20 elite qualifying nights and continue for every 10 qualifying nights until you earn 100 nights.

Marriott Bonvoy doesn’t have “milestone rewards,” but rather, the program has a similar benefit called “Annual Choice Benefit.”

Marriott Bonvoy’s Annual Choice Benefit is available when you reach 50 and 75 elite qualifying nights during a calendar year.

At 50 nights, you get to choose between Nightly Upgrade Awards, elite qualifying nights, gifting Elite Silver Status to a friend, a discount on a mattress, or donating $100 (all figures in USD) to a charity.

At 75 nights, you get the same choices except the elite status gift is upgraded from Silver to Gold, and you can select a Free Night Award worth up to 40,000 Marriott Bonvoy points.

Lastly, the Hilton Honors program has a “Milestone Benefit” component to its loyalty program.

With Hilton’s Milestone Benefit, you earn a bonus 10,000 Hilton Honors points once you reach 40 eligible nights.

You then continue to earn an extra 10,000 points for every 10 nights past 40, with an additional bonus 30,000 points awarded when you reach 60 qualifying nights.

Best Milestone Rewards for 30 Elite Qualifying Nights or Fewer

If you earn less than 30 qualifying nights with any given hotel loyalty program you won’t have many options for milestone rewards.

Both the Hilton Honors and Marriott Bonvoy programs won’t reward you with the extra benefits until 40 and 50 qualifying nights respectively.

At 20 qualifying nights, the IHG One Rewards program will give you one choice of the following rewards:

• 5,000 IHG One Rewards points
• 2 × $20 Food and Beverage Rewards
• One Confirmable Suite Upgrade

At 30 qualifying nights, you have the same choice again except without the suite upgrade option.

With World of Hyatt, after you reach 20 qualifying nights, you have a choice between:

• 2000 World of Hyatt points after your next stay at specific Hyatt brands
• 2 Club Access Awards
• $25 FIND experience credit

At 30 qualifying nights with World of Hyatt, you have the same choice plus you automatically receive a Category 1–4 Free Night Award.

Given this, if you only plan on earning 20 elite qualifying nights with a single brand in a calendar year, the IHG One Rewards program has the best milestone rewards benefit.

5,000 IHG One Rewards points beats out Hyatt’s 2,000 points, and the $40 food and beverage credit is more valuable than a $25 FIND experience credit.

However, at 30 elite qualifying nights, World of Hyatt’s Free Night Award is better than any of the IHG One Rewards choices.

Best Milestone Rewards for 31–60 Elite Qualifying Nights

Once you’ve earned more than 30 elite qualifying nights, milestone rewards get a lot more interesting.

Let’s look at what you would earn with each program if you reach 60 elite qualifying nights.

World of Hyatt

For the sake of making the comparison between the programs easier, let’s assume that you choose either the bonus points or the FIND Experience credit when given a choice at each Milestone Rewards threshold.

With the inclusion of these choices, once you reach 60 qualifying nights with Hyatt, you’ll have earned the following Milestone Rewards.

• 14,000 points or $350 FIND Experience Credit
• One Category 1–7 Free Night Award
• One Category 1–4 Free Night Award
• Three Guest of Honor Awards
• Two Suite Upgrade Awards
• Hyatt Concierge

IHG One Rewards

At 60 qualifying nights with IHG One Rewards, the Milestone Rewards you receive will largely depend on your choice.

• If you select points every time, you’ll end up with 50,000 IHG points.
• If you select the Food and Beverage Rewards, you’ll have a total of 24 × $20 credit or $480.

You can also receive different benefits if you choose the annual lounge membership at 40 nights or a Confirmable Suite Upgrade at 20 and/or 40 nights.

Marriott Bonvoy

At 50 qualifying nights, Marriott Bonvoy members will have one choice of benefits. Of the available choices (listed in the first section), the five Nightly Upgrade Awards tends to be the most popular.

Hilton Honors

The Hilton Honors program simply gives you points as you reach each milestone, beginning at 40 elite qualifying nights.

As mentioned above, you earn 10,000 Hilton Honors points once you reach 40 eligible nights, 10,000 more at 50 eligible nights, and 10,000 plus a one-time 30,000-point bonus at 60 eligible nights.

This means that if you earn 60 elite qualifying nights, you’ll have earned a total of 60,000 Hilton Honors points.

Which Milestone Reward Is The Best At This Level?

The World of Hyatt Milestone Rewards are by far the best, especially once you reach 60 qualifying nights. The two Free Night Awards alone could be worth up to 40,000 World of Hyatt points combined, on top of the cumulative 14,000 points you could choose at the different thresholds.

The Guest of Honor benefit is also particularly valuable if you want to book a stay for friends or family.

Additionally, the concierge benefit and suite upgrade awards can both help enhance your stay.

After Hyatt, Hilton Honors and IHG One Rewards are fairly equal.

60,000 Hilton Honors points is better than 50,000 IHG points; however, IHG does offer other reward options.

If you’re only after points, the Hilton Honors option is the better of the two. If you want some of the other milestone benefits then IHG One Rewards is the best.

Lastly, Marriott Bonvoy’s 50 night Annual Choice Benefit just doesn’t really stack up compared to what’s offered by the other three programs.

Best Milestone Rewards for 60+ Elite Qualifying Nights

After 60 nights, you’ll have already earned or will be getting close to earning the highest status with each program.

At this level, milestone rewards become an additional bonus when you continue staying with the brand for the remainder of the calendar year.

World of Hyatt

With World of Hyatt, you’ll continue to earn Milestone Rewards up until 150 elite qualifying nights each year.

For every 10 nights, you’ll have a choice of either 10,000 Hyatt points, a Suite Upgrade Award, a $300 FIND Experience credit (only for nights 70, 80, and 90), or a Miraval Extra Night Award (only for nights 100, 110, 120, 130, 140, and 150).

You’ll also receive a Category 1–7 Free Night Award at 100 nights and an Ultimate Free Night Award at 150 nights.

If you make it all the way to 150, and you select the 10,000 Hyatt points when given a choice, you’ll have earned the following Milestone Rewards in addition to the ones you earned by getting to 60 qualifying nights.

• 90,000 Hyatt points
• One Category 1–7 Free Night Award
• One Ultimate Free Night Award

IHG One Rewards

With the IHG One Rewards program, the Milestone Rewards are capped at 100 nights.

After 60 qualifying nights, if you make it all the way to 100 and select the points option every time you have a choice, you’ll have an additional 40,000 IHG points. If you choose the Food and Beverage Credit instead, you’ll have an additional $400 to spend on eligible dining experiences at IHG properties.

Marriott Bonvoy

After 60 nights, Marriott Bonvoy members will only receive one more Annual Choice Benefit at 75 elite qualifying nights.

Of the available options, the most common choice of benefit at this tier is the Free Night Award worth up to 40,000 Bonvoy points.

Hilton Honors

Lastly, Hilton Honors members will continue to earn 10,000 Hilton Honors points for every 10 qualifying nights after 60 nights.

With the Hilton Honors program, there is no cap to when you stop earning Milestone Benefits. This means that you’ll continue to earn 10,000 points for every 10 elite qualifying nights you accumulate, all the way until night 360 if you live in a Hilton hotel year-round.

Which Milestone Reward Is The Best at This Level?

The World of Hyatt’s Milestone Rewards is once again the best if you are earning 60+ qualifying nights with a specific hotel brand.

That being said, if you don’t make it past 75 qualifying nights, then Marriott Bonvoy’s Free Night Award may actually beat out the milestone benefits from the other hotel chains.

However, if you live in a Hilton hotel for the whole year then an argument could be made for Hilton’s Milestone Benefits.

With Hilton, you won’t receive any Free Night Rewards, but you will continue to earn 10,000 Hilton Honors points for every 10 nights without any limit.

Lastly, IHG still provides some decent benefits if you continue to stay past 60 qualifying nights, especially since you have a choice of points, Food and Beverage Credits, Confirmable Suite Upgrades, or an annual lounge membership.

Conclusion

In the end, World of Hyatt has the best overall Milestone Rewards program.

From bonus points to Free Night Awards to concierge service, if you are looking at benefits beyond the normal perks that come with elite status then World of Hyatt is the program to invest in.

Milestone rewards can be a nice little bonus or the main reason to participate in a hotel’s loyalty program, and these benefits can really add up as you stay loyal to your favourite hotel brand.

Each program has something different to offer. IHG has the unique Food and Beverage Credits, Marriott has an interesting choice that includes a Free Night Award or a discount on a mattress, and Hilton has no limit on the number of 10-night threshold bonuses that you can receive.

That being said, World of Hyatt’s Milestone Reward benefits are the stand out in the pack, as the other programs just can’t beat the Free Night Awards, concierge serve, Guest of Honor certificates, and more.