Many airlines and hotel chains grant you a higher status even without you meeting their normal requirement, this is possible via a status match. A status match is when you leverage your membership in one airline/hotel chain to get get the same status in another; for example if you are a Hyatt globalist member you could leverage this membership to get a similar status with Marriott. Though, most of these status match come with a minimum requirement you need to meet in order to get that status, consider the above example to get that Marriott platinum membership you still have to have qualifying stays for 16 room nights within a 90 day period after you have signed up for the status match, but still its a lot lesser than the normal requirement of 50 room nights. But there are few status match which are very generous which grant you status outright though these are very rare and are worth looking out for. One such status match was offered by Qatar Airways recently which granted me a platinum membership far more superior than the Burgundy tier I had before , I got this status by leveraging my Intermiles platinum status.
There are a lot of benefits which come with this membership some of which are :-
You get 60Q credits which are more than enough to upgrade you from economy class to business class from Kolkata-London (Oneway)
You get complimentary lounge access to all Qatar Airways lounges worldwide irrespective of the class you are travelling and you are also allowed to bring 2 guests along with you free of charge. If you are travelling in business class than you can use the Qatar Airways First Class Lounge in Doha which is one of the best lounges in the world.
You can also use the Al-Maha meet and greet services (Gold package) when landing in Doha, in which a member from Al-Maha team will personally come to get you and your family inside the plane once you land in Doha and you will be whisked through a private security lane and also immigration (if Doha is your end destination). This service can save a lot of time for business travelers.
You also get 5 lounge access pass which you can use if you want to take more than 2 guests with you to the lounge.
You also get an additional 35kgs of baggage allowance, thus you never have to worry about paying for extra luggage.
You also get upgraded to Oneworld Emerald tier which grants a host of advantages when travelling with Oneworld alliance partners like British Airways, American Airlines, Cathay Pacific and many more. You can read about these benefits by visiting Oneworld.
Source: oneworld.com
There are lot of other benefits you get with this status but the key ones I have mentioned above. As you can see these are some valuable benefits and as Qatar Airways is such a major airline serving India these benefits can really come in handy and I got these benefits by literally sending an email which took me less than 5 mins.
If you too want to do a status match you can look out on this page as I will be updating this page as an when new status match offers come in.
Update:
Marriott has launched a very lucrative status match offer wherein you could get Marriott gold by spending just 5 nights in a Marriott property or a Marriott platinum membership by spending 15 nights in a Marriott property. You will have to complete you stay within 90 days of signing up, after-which if you complete the minimum requirement you get to keep that status up til February 2022. In order for you to sign up for this challenge you need to hold a similar status in either Hyatt, IHG, Club Accor or Hilton. This offer is valid for a limited time period only so if you are thinking of staying at a Marriott hotel in the next 3 months you should definitely sign up for this offer.
Some of the status match which you can do anytime are, Marriott, Turkish Airlines, Singapore Airlines (if you have a Taj gold or Shangrila Jade membership).
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Siddharth Sanganeria