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How to keep your hotel points from expiring without staying in a hotel

  • Brendan Dorsey

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    We’ve written about how to keep your airline miles from expiring without flying. Here’s how to keep your hotel points from expiring without staying in a hotel.

    Pro tip: The easiest (and most mindless!) way to keep your points from expiring is to use one of the best hotel credit cards for a reoccurring monthly bill like Netflix. That way you can set it and forget it, and you won’t ever have to worry about your points expiring.

    Points expire in most U.S.-based hotel programs after 12 to 24 months of no earning or redemption activity. And some programs like Choice and Wyndham hotels expire after two and four years and there is nothing you can do to extend the expiration, so you might as well use them before they expire.

    Award Wallet is a good tool to track your miles and points balances and expiration dates.

    HotelExpiration policy
    Choice Privileges18 months of not earning or spending points
    Club Carlson24 months of not earning or spending points
    Hilton HHonors12 months of not earning or spending points
    World of Hyatt24 months of not earning or spending points
    IHG12 months of not earning or spending points

    Your points will NOT expire as long as you have elite status
    Marriott24 months of not earning or spending points
    WyndhamPoints expire after 4 years and you can't do anything to extend them beyond 4 years.

    However, they will expire sooner (in 18 months)of not earning or spending points

    But it is really, really easy to keep your hotel points active without staying in the hotel. Sometimes, all you need to do is to make an award booking and cancel it later, for free. This will generate redemption activity when you make the award and earning activity when you cancel the award and reset the point expiration clock. But be sure to check the cancellation policy when you book.

    You can easily extend the expiration by buying something cheap or making a $1 donation from the airline’s online shopping mall, or using a credit card to keep your points active. Read below for all the ways to keep your hotel points from expiring!

    Choice Hotels International

    Link:  Choice Privileges

    Choice points expiration policy

    Choice says: “As long as you stay an active Choice Privileges member, we’ll make sure you keep the points you earn. Now, as long as you have a qualifying activity every 18 months, you keep your points.”

    1.   Keep Your Choice Hotels Points Active By Earning Points

    2.   Keep Your Choice Hotels Points Active by Redeeming Points

    Radisson Rewards

    Link:  Radisson Rewards

    Radisson Points expiration policy

    Radisson says: “As long as you actively participate in the program by earning or redeeming points within the previous 24-month period, Gold Points do not have an expiration date.”

    1.   Keep Your Club Carlson Points Active By Earning Points

    2.   Keep Your Club Carlson Points Active by Redeeming Points

    Hilton Honors

    Link:  Hilton Honors

    Hilton points expiration policy

    Hilton says “Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months with no activity.”

    1.   Keep your Hilton points active by earning points

    2.   Keep your Hilton points active by redeeming points

    Hyatt

    Link:  World of Hyatt

    Hyatt points expiration policy

    Hyatt says “If an account is left inactive for more than 24 calendar months, the account may be deleted and all points in the account forfeited.“

    1.   Keep your Hyatt points active by earning points

    2.   Keep your Hyatt points active by redeeming

    IHG

    Link:  IHG Rewards

    IHG points expiration policy

    IHG says: “All points will expire after 12 months if there’s no account activity.”

    1.   Keep your IHG Rewards points active by earning

    2.   Keep your IHG Rewards points active by redeeming

    Marriott

    Link:  Marriott Bonvoy

    Marriott Points expiration policy

    Marriott says: “Marriott Bonvoy points expire after 24 months without qualifying activity.”

    This means that earning and redeeming Marriott points will extend the life of the points.

    However, there are exceptions which do not qualify as earning or redeeming activity:

    1.   Keep your Marriott Rewards points active by earning

    2.   Keep your Marriott Rewards points active by redeeming

    Wyndham

    Link:  Wyndham Rewards

    Wyndham points expiration policy

    Wyndham says “Wyndham Rewards points expire after 18 months of no account activity. They also expire 4 years (48 months) from the date earned, regardless of account activity.”

    What this means is that your points will expire four years after earning them and there is nothing you can do to extend this four year period.  But your points will expire sooner if you have no account activity for 18 months.

    1.   Keep your Wyndham points active by earning points

    2.   Keep your Wyndham Points active by redeeming points

    Editorial Note: We're the Million Mile Secrets team. And we're proud of our content, opinions and analysis, and of our reader's comments. These haven’t been reviewed, approved or endorsed by any of the airlines, hotels, or credit card issuers which we often write about. And that’s just how we like it! :)