Issue #27: 'Til Death Do Us Part?

Request for info! ! I’m writing a future issue about industry conferences: the good and bad. What do we need more or less of? What would make you attend as a sponsor or as an audience member? What works well? What has to stop? What topics do you want to hear about? Whether you are with a B2B provider or a brand, I’m really interested to hear from you. All quotes will be kept anonymous. Just email me your thoughts.

🥇 Top-clicked link in issue #26: The McDonald’s loyalty dossier story

In this Issue:

In 2012, I was part of the team at SPG that brought published Lifetime benefits to the hotel industry. Other hotel programs had unpublished lifetime benefits, while the airlines had million-miler programs that sounded as hard to achieve as they were. Scarcity was the name of the lifetime loyalty game.

In our quest to steal as much share from the competition and ensure it was “impossible for mega travelers not to choose Starwood” (per the press release), we knew the benefits needed to be not only rich, but bold, and not too out of reach. We thought it made both marketing and financial sense, and truly thought we were giving customers something permanent. But alas, in business, nothing is permanent. By the time I left Starwood in 2014, our SPG Lifetime member count had blown past our estimates, and there were inklings it might not be sustainable the way it was. Then, Starwood was sold to Marriott, the terms (and the tiers) changed, and everyone realized “lifetime” isn't the customer's lifetime—it’s the program's, or even just the tenure of whatever executive is making the decisions.

Fourteen years later, and seeing the state of “lifetime” status across the travel industry, no one is better off. Not the member, not the programs, not the brands. And I think it’s time we put the lifetime genie back in the bottle as a published benefit. Because publishing a lifetime benefit isn’t creating loyalty. It creates potential liability on your books, crowdedness across your benefit delivery, and sets an expectation that customers are getting something forever that will not be.

In June 2025, Carnival announced that a new program would launch a year later with a new name, a different earning structure, and the elimination of its Lifetime VIFP status. Not only would no new members qualify for lifetime, but existing lifetime members would eventually have to requalify as well. Their President, Christine Duffy, came right out and said what the problem was: “When so many guests have elite status, it is much more difficult to make everyone feel special.”

But the backlash was immediate. Many Carnival customers had organized their travel plans (and maybe retirement) around that lifetime status. The promise was broken, and it laid bare to all travelers that what you thought you had, you really didn’t.

Carnival did a partial about-face a few months later, in September 2025, reinstating Lifetime Diamond for those who qualified before the new program cutoff. Was it good they walked it back? Yes. Did it signal to the rest of the industry how dangerous lifetime is as a benefit? Also yes. You either honor it forever and deal with its crushing weight on your program, or you eat the backlash. There is no quiet exit.

Carnival was able to change the terms of lifetime status due to its T&C. In fact, every program that has a lifetime benefit has similar language to this from Hilton: “Lifetime Diamond Elite Tier Status is granted at the discretion of Hilton Honors and may be ended, or amended with or without notice or compensation, at Hilton Honors’ sole discretion.”

Beyond the out clause, most brands with published lifetime tiers—such as Marriott—are keeping their highest tiers outside Lifetime status. Hilton added a Diamond Reserve tier above Diamond in November 2025, and every Lifetime Diamond member got silently demoted overnight. So there is no way to get top-tier for life, just a lifetime consolation prize.

Buried or published, your best customers lose out on their future to pay the mortgage on past members. Today’s lifetime status is a watered-down shell of years past, with hard-to-get benefits and devalued earnings. It doesn’t even matter that there are legal outs, because the brands have structured it so the perception of lifetime loyalty is better than the reality.

You might find the rare “founding member” label in the wild, but non-travel brands have stayed away from lifetime status, and for good reason. Loyalty often follows a beloved product, but that can change quickly. Assortment, product quality, pricing, and customer experience keep people coming back. Give someone lifetime status, and you’ve lost the pull to drive the sale needed to reach the maintenance-based tier.

That’s why brands that do have tiers reset them every year (including in travel!). Yes it turns loyalty members into Sisyphus, pushing the proverbial boulder up the hill only for it to roll back down again. But consumer behavior has proven it works. The need for achievement—whether in earning badges, accumulating points, or hitting tier status—is at the heart of loyalty recognition. If it’s something you’ve gotten and can never lose, where’s the motivation?

Even knowing this, the travel industry has created a problem it can’t fix. Too many elite members (lifetime included) and not enough benefit supply to feel special. They’ve also purposely made their program status LOUD, from different lines to lounge access to published upgrade lists. Outside travel, not so much. Everyone waits in the same coffee line at Starbucks; everyone is in the same checkout line at Sephora (however, for the record, I think my lifetime Sephora sales warrant me a cut-the-line status 💄).

In an age where everything is shared within milliseconds, I realize “quiet loyalty” is a bit of a misnomer. But I think going back to an age of unpublished status, 100% at the brand's discretion, would bring back some of the magic and allure loyalty used to have. The “how did you get that?” conversation. The (real) surprise and delight moments. The discretionary recognition.

I’d also love to see this beyond travel, but realizing it doesn’t work for every industry (does anyone want a ‘Taco Bell lifetime member’ label?), but the point is it would drive more creativity in how we recognize long-standing behavior. Because I don’t want our industry to stop rewarding our best customers who give consistent year-over-year spend. Just the opposite. But we can only reward them more if we stop publishing all the promises. I was one of those who helped publish the lifetime promise. So now I’m publishing this opinion to help stop it.

Is lifetime status a great current marketing tactic that is putting a burden on the future loyalty team to solve? Or is it a true differentiator that is worth the risk? Comment and let me know.