In the world of the Status Match Merry Go Round®, you know how I always say that if you can do a match and it’s not a one time match, do the match? 🙂
Well, if you’d been in Las Vegas between October 2024 and January 2025, you were able to match to Venetian (most likely Ruby Tier). The match was certainly lackluster, with none of the “fun” benefits like the dining credit available to matchers.
But as you may have seen in the MilesTalk Facebook group a couple of weeks ago, I caught wind of a reciprocal status match arrangement between Venetian and Pechanga Casino Resort in Temecula, California (about 2 hours or a bit less in no traffic or up to 4 hours in traffic from LA, and about 45 minutes from San Diego).
I took a drive over the day before the MilesTalk Meetup in Santa Monica on the 26th specifically to test out this match for you, and it works.
The match is outlined here.
Right up front and just like at Venetian, the best perks are earned with play, not just by having the card.
But more importantly, you may well be able to use your shiny new Pechanga card to onward match and the card is now printing with a January 2026 expiration date – although I’ve been told by multiple employees that the match is actually good for 365 days regardless of what the card says.
Some that tried a couple of weeks ago got 2025 expiration dates and I was skeptical when I went on the 25th, but happily the 2026 date came out. Actually, the first card came out without a date, but I asked for a reprint with a date and they were able to oblige.
Remember that you won’t be able to onward match in most cases without an expiration date, however, in the case of Pechanga, your Venetian card may have no printed expiration date in which case they will ask for you to login online and show your status with expiration date.
If you did the Venetian tier match, you have just one month until your status runs out (Feb 28th, 2025) to make this work.
This probably won’t appeal to many that aren’t already in SoCal, but if you are I think it’s worth grabbing. Even without me writing about it (well, OK, maybe the initial post in the Facebook group was responsible for some), they did say they have been getting a lot of tier matches. Hopefully this sticks around as an ongoing match.
Based on nothing but a wish and a prayer, my guess is that one should be able to match back to Venetian starting in March. We won’t know until March if that works and you’d have to match by February, so I guess you have to decide for yourself if it’s worth your time. I suspect this won’t be worth it for most, but if you’re local, why not?
And I hope it goes without saying but yes, this has to be done in person….
Thoughts?
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