Marriott Elite Lifetime Status is determined by your total qualified nights stayed and points earned throughout the course of your membership – including your paid nights, Elite rollover nights, meeting nights and the nights and points earned on your Marriott Rewards Credit Card.
How You Earn Marriott Elite Lifetime Status
Once you reach a milestone, you can attain a higher level and your lifetime status is yours to keep forever!
Marriott Lifetime Status Details
Lifetime Platinum Elite status is offered after the following qualifications are met:
- Guest has earned 750 Elite nights over the history of the Marriott Rewards account.
- Guest has accrued 2,000,000 total points earned during the history of the account.
For Lifetime Gold Elite, the Elite night requirement is 500 nights and the point requirement is 1,600,000.
For Lifetime Silver Elite, the Elite night requirement is 250 nights and the point requirement is 1,200,000.
Ways to earn Elite Nights faster
Here are some ways that you can rack up nights faster:
- You get 10 nights credit for holding a meeting, special event or even reserving a block of rooms.
- You get 15 credits towards Elite status by having the Marriott Rewards Credit Card.
Rollover Nights:
Extra nights above these will rollover to the following year.
- Silver Elite – Nights in excess of 10
- Gold Elite – Nights in excess of 50
- Platinum Elite – Nights in excess of 75
- Platinum Premier Elite – The top percentage of Platinum Elite travelers, calculated annually
Bottom Line
Remember that these qualifiers are over the lifetime of your Marriott account, so you can keep working on Lifetime status and keep it once you hit the first milestone of Lifetime Silver Elite. It is cool that Marriott’s Lifetime status doesn’t require a certain number of years in order to qualify like some other programs. This makes it easier to achieve if you are new to Marriott and perhaps are staying at Marriott every week. You can get there faster.
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
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With almost 450 nights credited, I’m well on my way to hitting the number required for lifetime Gold. However, I’m barely over 700K lifetime points. I don’t suppose anyone has any good ideas for accumulating points more quickly aside from purchasing them or transferring Ultimate Rewards points?
The problem has never been nights. The problem has always been points.
Ken,
Get the Marriott Rewards Preferred Visa card. While you get your standard points for nights, you get 5 points for each dollar on room rate. This is huge if you are dedicated to Marriott. If you stayed in a Marriott hotel 450 nights x $150 per room x 10 points per dollar = 675,000 points (you may stay at different rate properties but I used $150 as an average. If you had charged those rooms to the Marriott Visa, you would have earned an additional 337,500 points. You would therefore be over 1 million right now. Additionally, you would get 15 elite nights per year just for having the card so that boosts the nights too even though that is less important, its still something.
Update since my previous comments here – I did indeed get the email offering a birthday present this past year. It was a free night towards my status, a first for me, and much appreciated.
Ken,
Forgot something else, you obviously get points on general spending at a rate of 1X per dollar. However, you get 2X per dollar on airfares, car rentals, and restaurants. Also, the signup bonus obviously counts. So if you sign up now at the 80K offer, you are now that much closer.
Captain Kirk,
Thanks, and that’s generally an excellent suggestion. However, I should have mentioned that I’ve already had the Marriott Visa for almost 6 years (and also had the business version when I was self-employed). So 75 of my lifetime nights have been a result of the card’s 15 elite-qualifying nights/per year, and another 40 or 50 were from meetings.
As you can tell, I spent a lot of nights in cheap Fairfield and TownPlace Suites at my clients’ discount rates, which is why I’m relatively nights-rich and points-poor.
Chase Ultimate Rewards Points transferred to Marriott also count towards your lifetime points. You could get the Sapphire, Ink or Freedom cards (or any combination of them) and transfer your sign up bonus and regular points to Marriott. On an ongoing basis you can take advantage of the Freedom 5x the points quarterly bonus categories to rack up some extra points. Currently you can buy Visa debit cards at gas stations for 5x the points and load them onto RedCard at Target. If you can get the Ink card that’s the best way.
Do you still get an elite credit stay for every 3,000 spent on the Marriott card? Would I be able to get lifetime platinum from just spend alone?
I have been the program for over 34 years. I have over 2225 lifetime nights, and over 5 million points. Yes I am a LPP. Most properties do understand the meaning of LPP but many times I have to tell the front desk I am a LPP. Because the word lifetime does not show up anywhere. Marriott should do something about this.
Having the Marriott Visa card is a must to achieve Lifetime status faster. Points accumulated on my credit card accounted for 26% of my total points towards Lifetime Gold status. Once I achieved Lifetime Gold, I thought it would be fun to add up all the costs of my travel and hotel over the 11 years it took. I ended up paying over $80,000 in hotel costs alone for Lifetime Gold!