My wife was offered Hilton Gold for free as AC*E for the last 2 years. We were both offered SPG Gold for being AC*E as well. However there is one catch, you have to keep you Hilton Honors/SPG accounts set to automatically convert hotel points to AE points. If you change your account to collect the hotel points you automatically lose the Gold Status I gave up the Gold status to collect SPG as it is much better value.