With just a few weeks to go until 2025 draws to a close, it’s time for all of us to wrap up another year of points-collecting endeavours.
As in previous years, let’s talk about a few key tasks you should be looking to complete during this period as you take stock of your annual progress and prepare for next year.
1. Wrap Up the Aeroplan Elite Status 2025 Benefit Year
Aeroplan Elite Status still sits at the centre of most Canadian points strategies. With a major overhaul coming in 2026, this year’s housekeeping is more important than usual: you’re closing out your 2025 benefit year under the old SQM/SQS/SQD framework, while also getting ready for the new Status Qualifying Credits (SQC) era.
One of the most valuable elite perks is eUpgrades, and you may have a mix of “old” and “new” credits in your account.
First, if you earned eUpgrade credits between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024 and you’re a premium Aeroplan credit cardholder, up to 50 unused credits from that batch were rolled into the 2025 benefit year as a one-time final rollover.
These rolled credits all expire on January 15, 2026, and there will be no further eUpgrade rollovers after that, so make sure you use them before they disappear.
For eUpgrades earned on or after July 1, 2024, the rules are now much simpler:
- Credits are valid for 12 months from the date they are issued.
- If you’re the primary holder of an Aeroplan premium credit card, they’re valid for 24 months, with no cap on how many credits that applies to.
That 12- or 24-month validity continues under the revamped elite program, so it’s worth double-checking your account and planning upgrades strategically around your 2026 travel.
Aeroplan Premium Credit Cards
eUpgrades aren’t the only valuable benefits that will need to be used up by the year-end period. If you’re holding onto Maple Leaf Lounge passes or Status Passes, those also need to be used up before December 31.
We’ve seen many members of the Prince of Travel community offering up these perks as free gifts to fellow travellers in the Prince of Travel Membership or Prince of Travel Elites Facebook group. If you’re sitting on passes that might otherwise go to waste, consider sharing the joy of an elevated travel experience this holiday season!
Incidentally, if you’ve qualified for Aeroplan Elite Status but haven’t made use of any of these benefits yet, then December 31, 2025 also marks the final date to choose your Select Benefits for the 2026 benefit year.
If you don’t make your selections by then, you could lose out on some very valuable benefits to use in 2026.
And lastly, if you’ve yet to qualify for status at all, then don’t forget that the Everyday Status Qualification counter resets at the end of the year.
If you’re close to qualifying for Aeroplan 25K through Everyday Status Qualification, now is the time to top up your activity before the counter resets on December 31.
2. Finalize Hotel Elite Status Qualification
Besides Air Canada and Aeroplan, the end of year usually also marks the end of the qualification period for other elite status programs, too.
Now’s the time to assess your projected status level for 2025. Among hotel programs, take stock of your Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, and World of Hyatt status progress while there’s still time to squeeze in a few stays.
If you still find yourself a few nights short of the 50-night threshold for the highly valuable Marriott Platinum Elite, then it could make sense to either embark on a last-ditch holiday trip or make a quick trip to an affordably-priced hotel in order to earn the additional nights required.
Keep in mind, however, that Marriott Bonvoy is again granting “status soft landing” in 2026. This means if you’ve failed to requalify for your current elite status in 2025, you’ll receive only a one-status downgrade in 2026, as follows:
- 2025 Ambassador members will enjoy Titanium status
- 2025 Titanium members will enjoy Platinum status
- 2025 Platinum members will enjoy Gold status
- 2025 Gold members will enjoy Silver status
If you plan on being in Vancouver or Edmonton before the end of the year, be sure to take advantage of the Stay Vancouver Hotels or Edmonton’s Best Hotels promotions. You can score a hotel at a very favourable price, and you’ll also earn nights towards your status qualification.
And if you’re close to reaching Marriott Titanium status, consider making a final push by the end of the year. After all, the Annual Choice Benefit upon accumulating 75 elite qualifying nights gives you a Free Night Award worth 40,000 Bonvoy points, so as long as you’re spending no more than 40,000 points on your mattress run, you can think of it as effectively not costing you anything.
Moreover, with the status match opportunity between Marriott Bonvoy and Air Canada, Marriott Bonvoy Titanium members and above will receive complimentary Aeroplan 25K status.
The Aeroplan 25K status will be even more beneficial for those who travel frequently on a basic fare, as carry-on allowance isn’t included on Basic fares unless you hold status.
3. Maximize Year-End Limits for Points Transfers and Purchases
The end of the year resets many annual limits across loyalty programs, especially for points transfers and purchases.
Most notably, Marriott Bonvoy allows members to send up to 100,000 Bonvoy points per calendar year to another member’s account, and to receive up to 500,000 Bonvoy points per calendar year from other members.
For those of you earning points as a couple or as a family, you should definitely make sure you’ve maximized this transfer capacity for 2025 and pooled your Bonvoy points into a single household member’s account to as great an extent as possible.
Ideally, pool your household members’ points into the account of the member who earns the most elite qualifying nights, and therefore the highest elite status level. After all, Platinum status on one account means free breakfast for two, room upgrades, and late check-out.
In the same vein, if you’re in the habit of accelerating your earning power by purchasing miles when it makes sense, then you’ll know that the loyalty programs usually have a capped amount on how many miles you can purchase per year.
If your needs for buying miles happen to exceed this cap, then you’d want to make sure you’ve met the cap for 2025 before it resets for the year.
As a reminder, the following programs have promotions for buying points up to the end of the year:
4. Use Up Year-End Credits and Offers
Similar to the above, many types of credits and certificates expire at the end of the year, and you’ll just want to quickly check that you’ve taken care of these before 2026 rolls around.
As the year winds down, it’s worth double-checking any annual credits or certificates tied to your credit cards. Many of these reset on January 1st, and leaving them unused is basically the same as throwing away money (which, as Canadians, we do enough of already with grocery prices).
There are a handful of annual credits to make use of before 2026, including:
If you haven’t redeemed these yet, now’s the time to squeeze out whatever value remains before 2026.
There’s also a variety of different Amex Offers that will be ending on December 31 as well. Most notably, the following Amex Offers are set to expire before the end of the year:
If you hold the US Platinum Card or US Business Platinum Card, there are two major calendar-year credits to check before December 31:
- Airline Fee Credit – $200 (USD)/year
Both cards still offer up to $200 in incidental airline credits on your chosen carrier. This applies to fees like checked bags and seat selection, not base airfare. - Hotel Credit – Up to $600 (USD)/year
Each card also includes up to $600 in annual hotel credits, split into two $300 periods (Jan–Jun and Jul–Dec). The credit applies to prepaid Fine Hotels + Resorts and The Hotel Collection bookings made through Amex Travel. The credit triggers on the booking date, so locking in a prepaid reservation before year-end can secure the second $300 portion.
Between the airline fee credit and the semi-annual hotel credit, a quick year-end sweep of your US cards can easily recover several hundred US dollars in value.
Make sure you’ve used whatever’s available before December 31, especially for airline fee credits, which require a bit of strategy depending on your chosen airline.
5. Review Accounts and Look Ahead at 2026
While this isn’t necessarily an end-of-year activity, something you can do during the final few weeks of each year is to take some time to review your points expiry dates, hotel stays, and airline activity.
One reason to do this is to check for any points nearing expiration and take steps to extend their validity.
Another reason is to catch any errors that may have occurred that you may have overlooked during the year, such as missing night credits, points not posting correctly, or forgotten future reservations.
Now is the perfect time to review your mileage activity across all the loyalty programs you participate in and reach out to the program if anything needs to be corrected.
Looking forward at 2026, you can also review your spreadsheet to tally up your total points earnings for the year and think about further optimization for next year.
Once you’ve reconciled your accounts and corrected any discrepancies, take a moment at the end of the year to put your feet up, relax, and look ahead in anticipation for your list of upcoming reservations for 2026.
Conclusion
‘Tis the season for tying up the loose ends in Miles & Points as 2025 draws to a close.
Take some time during the last few weeks of the year to deal with the many elements in our space that move in yearly cycles, such as elite status qualification, points transfers and purchases, and the various credit cards’ and loyalty programs’ credits, certificates, and benefits.
This story originally appeared on princeoftravel
