GHA
Earlier this year GHA started experimenting with the idea of the paid status match, and they’ve just relaunched another round:
- Apply by November 30
- Matches available from hotel programs, airlines and credit cards
- Fee: $100 for Platinum, $150 for Titanium
- Half refunded to your GHA account (i.e. D$50 / 75)
- Double night credits in the first half of 2026
The threshold for hotel programs is reasonable: Marriott Platinum, IHG Platinum, Hilton Diamond, Radisson VIP etc. all qualify. It’s much harder through airline programs, and only credit cards issued in the Indian or Chinese markets qualify.
That said, paying for a match at such a niche hotel group really doesn’t feel worthwhile, so I won’t go into much detail here.
Preferred Hotels
We wrote about an instant upgrade offer for Preferred Hotels Titanium not long ago. The loophole was shut down quickly and from what I understand they downgraded the affected accounts too.
On the other hand, Preferred Hotels has a long standing partnership with Mastercard and select cardholders in Asia Pacific are able to apply for the match. It appears to have been extended to the European market recently.
The offer page is here but you must be signed in to view it. It is available to World Elite Mastercard members:
- Request an activation code which will be sent to your email address
- Create a new Preferred Hotels account with the code
- After your first stay, you’ll be upgraded to Titanium and receive 25,000 points
Note that it’s for new sign-ups only and the rules have changed now that you must complete a stay first before they upgrade you.
Two caveats:
- You might get a “card not eligible” error. You’ll need to email Mastercard Priceless support to resolve it
- If your Preferred Hotels account doesn’t get automatically upgraded after the first stay, you’ll also need to contact them to fix it
Main Titanium benefits include:
- Room upgrade
- Early check-in and late check-out
- Welcome amenity
- Food and beverage items
Breakfast isn’t normally included, but you might get drink vouchers, afternoon tea, free bike rentals etc. depending on the property.
Thanks to their partnership with Choice it’s possible to book cheap award stays at Preferred Hotels now. My recent experiences at One Palacio da Anunciada and Villa Copenhagen were overall positive. You might also get lucky and get some points for your award stays.
World Elite is not rare anymore and in the UK we’ve got Curve, HSBC and Barclays, amongst others. When creating a Mastercard Priceless account you must provide a card number: it must be qualifying but they don’t seem to verify the details. You could try BIN codes such as 537590.
Recent Comments