<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Weatherboy:
In past years, CO provided Elites with complimentary Gold HHonors status with Hilton (after 4 stays), free Emerald Club and Avis Preferred car rental "elite" programs, and Gold status with Starwood hotels.
Does CO or their marketing providers still provide any elite access or fast-track-to-elite status in any other program?
I think they sent me a mailing with complimentary Gold-level status in a Latin American hotel chain a few weeks ago, but I don't do much in the way of travel there.</font>
Not sure what CO is doing these days -- bear in mind that it's less "CO providing" than it is renting their mucho valuable lists to other travel vendors -- but if you search the various forums here you'll be able to get many of these items quite easily.
For instance,
there's a current thread on free Hilton gold.
You can get Hertz #1 Gold free by going to the
fee waived enrollment page and entering
program name US Airways Preferred and promotion code 6173.
Avis Preferred is free any time.
And not sure what's still currently valid, but there have been several recent ways to get instant gold with Starwood:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/007147.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum15/HTML/004110.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum74/HTML/006849.html
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View from the Wing: A blog about Free Miles and Free Markets