Applied Wednesday last week, 25 NOV early afternoon, one hour after it was posted here on Flyertalk by the HHonors Flyertalk ambassador.
The message said they would leave for thanksgiving and would answer after 5 business days, in fact they've been even faster: Received the auto reply after a few minutes on Wednesday and I just received the match today 4 hours ago (30 NOV), so 5 calendar days including a full weekend and thanksgiving - in Europe that would count as only half a business day total. Thanks for processing the matches that fast ^
Matched to Diamond till 03/17. I did send my account statements form SPG + Marriott, platinum for a few years now with both programs, again 65 nights BIB this year with SPG and another 44 with Marriott this year so far (I started to move away from Marriott more towards SPG for the life time status, so let's see how this will go after the merger...).
Very happy with the match to Hilton Diamond and Hyatt Diamond
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I'll give both programs a few tries and if the elite benefits are as good as they sound, then I assume I'll just do my 25 SPG stays next year and move the other nights to Hilton and Hyatt, renewing Diamond with one or even both. Looking forward to it, especially since Hilton seems to have more cities covered in Europe than SPG/Marriott/Hyatt. I was just so busy in keeping Platinum with both Marriott+SPG and working towards both lifetime statuses as fast as possible and so used to my benefits there that I had never stayed in a Hilton for the last 3 years, although I liked them when I was there before.
Now I just hope they don't repeat Hyatt's mistake but take a good look at all those matching requests instead to make sure the people they match actually have a few stays with the program they try to match.
Good luck to everyone and see you at the executive club lounges
