Recap of some great points earning opportunities right now

There's been a spate of offers from various hotel chains, though some have come and gone. I tend to focus on Hilton HHonors and Starwood (and a little with IHG), so I thought I'd summarise some of the live offers in one post, for readers' benefit. Here you go:

Hilton HHonors

• Hilton's summer promotion offers a choice of 2x points or 2x miles (obviously I picked points, and for many reasons, I'd suggest you do too)
• Complimentary HHonors Gold status for HP employees, valid till March 2015 (HP email ID required)
• Complimentary HHonors Gold status for Visa Infinite cardholders

Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG)

• Complimentary upgrade to SPG Preferred Guest Plus, which offers 4 pm late check out and room upgrades upon check-in
• SPG Earn Away, Get Away Summer promotion for 2x points (3x if your stay includes a Saturday in the Middle East, or Sunday anywhere else)
• Complimentary SPG Gold status if you complete one stay in Asia-Pacific and pay with a World MasterCard

IHG

• IHG always has many promotions running, and I've summarised what worked for me and what didn't. YMMV on this one. Remember, that IHG promotions are stackable.
  [Update] Here are my final results from the IHG Big Win promotions, which are stackable on top of the various promo codes.

There was also a great deal for free Platinum status with Hyatt Gold Passport, but that offer expired during the day. I did manage to cash in on this (which was supposed to be restricted to Microsoft employees, but ended up going public) before they withdrew it. I'm feeling a bit lousy that I couldn't write about this, but I wanted to test it out before I could let readers know about this offer. Maybe that's my learning for the future. But if you still want to read about it, you could look at various posts on BoardingArea, such as this one.