Hilton Honors seems to have just increased award costs for stays at some of its top properties (thanks to Phl06 on FlyerTalk for flagging this). I can’t say that I’m that surprised, but this is definitely a negative development.
In this post:
Hilton Honors raises points cap for top properties
For several years now, Hilton Honors hasn’t published award charts. While the program has dynamic award pricing, the reality is that the most expensive award rates at a particular hotel have been pretty consistent. That’s to say that if a standard room is available, you can redeem points for it at a cost that’s not above some (typically reasonable) maximum.
Up until now, Hilton Honors free night redemptions for standard rooms have topped out at 150,000 points per night, but that’s no longer the case. It seems that standard room free night redemptions now top out at 200,000 points per night, representing a 33% increase. For what it’s worth, it was only in 2021 that the cap was increased from 120,000 points to 150,000 points.
For example, you’ll find that the Waldorf Astoria Maldives now charges up to 200,000 points per night…
…while the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal now charges up to 190,000 points per night.
As before, Hilton Honors elite members can receive a fifth night free on award redemptions, meaning that a property costing up to 200,000 points per night could cost as little as 160,000 points per night.
I’m sure some people will jump in and point out that some Hilton Honors rooms cost over a million points per night. Just to clarify, when you see a rate beyond the maximum cap, that’s for premium room redemptions, when standard rooms aren’t available.
The bad news is that even beyond the properties that now cost more than 150,000 points per night, we’ve also seen a lot of other hotels increase award costs, compared to their previous maximum cost.
This is an unfortunate Hilton Honors change
Of course nobody is happy to see their points be worth less, so these changes aren’t good for anyone. Furthermore, we see Hilton increase points redemption rates at properties quite frequently, so this is also far from the first devaluation that we’ve seen.
However, if there’s any silver lining, at least as of now, it looks like not that many properties are priced at over 150,000 points per night, so this seems to be for a very limited number of resorts. Still, it’s never fun to see the cap on redemptions increased in this way.
Personally I value Hilton Honors points at 0.5 cents each, so that means a property costing 200,000 points per night is the equivalent of spending $1,000 per night for a hotel. With a fifth night free, that could be as low as $800 per night.
In terms of the cap on redemption costs and my valuation of points, this puts Hilton Honors more in line with IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, and World of Hyatt.
If anything, my bigger frustration with Hilton Honors continues to be the limited number of standard rooms that are available for redemptions at so many of the top properties. I find that situation to be much worse than with Marriott Bonvoy, for example.
Bottom line
Hilton Honors is now charging up to 200,000 points for free night redemptions in standard rooms, compared to the previous cap of up to 150,000 points per night. As of now, only a very limited number of properties seem to be impacted by this. Of course the issue is that once some properties charge that much, it makes it easy for other properties to similarly increase their rates.
What do you make of these Hilton Honors changes?
I am Lifetime Diamond based in Europe without access to co-branded credit cards, so this hits me pretty hard. I have been loyal despite Lifetime as I find the smaller brands like Curio more to my liking, and because I have access to CORP RATES that are more flexible than some of the competitors.
I have mostly used my points for really expensive properties like the WA Maldives in Nov'21. I mean, five nights...
I am Lifetime Diamond based in Europe without access to co-branded credit cards, so this hits me pretty hard. I have been loyal despite Lifetime as I find the smaller brands like Curio more to my liking, and because I have access to CORP RATES that are more flexible than some of the competitors.
I have mostly used my points for really expensive properties like the WA Maldives in Nov'21. I mean, five nights was a steal when the cash is $3K a night including fees. I have also spent at least three New Year's Eve at the Bentley on South Beach when cash rates were ranging from $799 to $1,699 for those five nights.
Of course this devaluation comes at the same time Hilton offers their poorest campaign ever What is it? A paltry 1,000 extra points per stay?
Listen up, you Hyatt fan boys —this Hilton Honors “devaluation” is just another smart move by Hilton to get rid of low value guests!
Charging 200,000 points for a standard room? That’s called value, folks. My Lifetime Diamond status still lands me suite upgrades 85% of the time—yep, sprawling suites with views that’d make your sad little Hyatt “suites” cry. And don’t get me started on my 6 PM late checkouts, practically guaranteed.
You...
Listen up, you Hyatt fan boys —this Hilton Honors “devaluation” is just another smart move by Hilton to get rid of low value guests!
Charging 200,000 points for a standard room? That’s called value, folks. My Lifetime Diamond status still lands me suite upgrades 85% of the time—yep, sprawling suites with views that’d make your sad little Hyatt “suites” cry. And don’t get me started on my 6 PM late checkouts, practically guaranteed.
You Hyatt loyalists whining about “value” clearly don’t get it—Hilton’s points are a flex, while your precious World of Hyatt hands out crumbs and calls it a feast. Keep dreaming of your “valuable” points; I am still laughing at your delusional devotion to a second-rate program.
G’day!
It's always a hoot to see users copy and paste ChatGPT roasts verbatim. They must have a lot of time on their hands.
And there is always that guy (trying to appear smart) who has even more time on his hands to comment on OP comment.
Ah, may not be the real DCS...but captured his spirit and 'logic' perfectly!
I remember there was a devaluation in I believe 2017 that, to me, was the moment it all went south for Hilton. (That might have been when award charts went away, too? Been a while...)
My interest has never been in redeeming at "aspirational" properties; to me, the real value has always been at decent lower-category properties that happen to be convenient to places I'm traveling anyway. There used to be a huge number of...
I remember there was a devaluation in I believe 2017 that, to me, was the moment it all went south for Hilton. (That might have been when award charts went away, too? Been a while...)
My interest has never been in redeeming at "aspirational" properties; to me, the real value has always been at decent lower-category properties that happen to be convenient to places I'm traveling anyway. There used to be a huge number of Hilton properties in the US (mostly Hamptons, Hilton Gardens, maybe some Homewoods, DoubleTrees etc.) that you could redeem for 10K a night. They also frequently had excellent points+cash rates that were significantly better than just taking 50% of the full points rate + 50% of the full cash rate. You could get genuine outsize value at 'normal' hotels if you were willing to shop around and be flexible. That single update/devaluation in 2017 ended all of that (and the website redesign was frankly awful).
Hilton has a page on their site called "Hilton Honors Points Explorer" that lets you search by how many points you're willing to redeem. I remember several years ago (but after the deval), I searched the USA (you can just type in "USA" for your destination) for 10,000-point redemptions, and got... 10 results. Nine Hampton Inns and one singular Hilton Garden Inn (Tulsa South, if memory serves). Note that these were not "starting at" 10K points; they were just 10K points, period.
Guess how many results you get today for 10K or less?
Zero.
I changed the search to 15K and got ONE property, the Spark by Hilton Lexington Hamburg. It returns a points *range* of 15-31K per night. Clicking "Select Dates," I see several dates for 16-18K points, some that are 20-21K, 24K, 29K, or 31K; looking ahead to August, there's some that are 34K, which is *higher* than the quoted range (15-31K, which apparently only reflects the next 30 days, according to the site), and even some for 36K in October; but I don't see a single night for just 15K until November.
Expanding the search to 20K returns 13 hotels total, but it's always a wide range, like 18-88K or 17-55K. The LOWEST upper limit I see is the Spark by Hilton Clarion (in PA), showing 18-27K - but again, that's just the range shown on the result page; looking at August, I already see several 28K nights (and incidentally, there are some 15-16K nights starting in November).
Expanding further to 25K, I see 139 hotels. Interestingly, there's a few properties that are *always* 23K a night; literally, their range is 23-23K. Those include the Hampton Inn & Suites Liberal (KS); Hampton Inn Sweetwater, TX; Spark by Hilton Longview (TX); Hampton Inn Marshall (TX); Spark by Hilton Jackson Ridgeland (MS); and Hampton Inn Lebanon (KY). All of them are very basic-looking properties with those loud old-style PTAC AC units. Really; that's it. Most of the other hotels' upper limits are in at least the 60K range, if not 100K+, up to a staggering 210K (the DoubleTree Tallahassee, 25-210K).
Now, when I'm traveling, I'm looking for a 'decent' place to stay. For me, 'decent' basically means clean, safe, quiet central-style air in the room (not the old Hampton Inn-style PTAC ones), and a pool with a hot tub on-site (and bonus points if there's an on-site bar/restaurant to get some real food). With that, we can virtually rule out any Hampton Inn, Spark, Tru, or Home2.
So filtering by brand, keeping the search at 25K, I get... 14 results.
The one with the LOWEST upper limit is the Homewood Suites Dallas-Park Central Area, with a range of 25-69K points. It appears to be an older-style Homewood, with central air and an indoor pool with hot tub. The pictures make it look nice. Then you click the reviews... the 5 most recent are all one-star. "A Dump," "The most disgusting Hilton hotel ever," "Just stay somewhere else"... Well, that's a nope.
Next up are three that max at 81K a night, but two of them have PTAC air units. One actually looks good, though: the Hilton Garden Inn Dallas/Richardson (24-81K). Central air, indoor pool with hot tub, and on-site Garden Grille & Bar open daily for breakfast and dinner. But I'm struggling to find a string of 5 dates where the points rate is under 30K, to take advantage of the 5th-night-free benefit while keeping the rate reasonable (if you want to stay over Christmas, then the nights of December 24-28 work). Allowing the rate to equal exactly 30K opens up a few more possible date ranges, but still very limited (August 21-25 work; also anywhere from December 11-18 or December 21 through January 4). There's a few other ranges where you can find, say, 4 in a row that are 27-29K and then a 32K or similar, but this is hardly getting outsize value for a redemption. Assuming a cash rate of $98/night (accurate for the Christmas example), the best redemption value you're getting here is...about $4.50 per thousand points ($5.11 if you include all taxes). Yes, this takes the 5th-night-free into account.
It's sad that this is now about the *best* value you can possibly get out of your Hilton points for any half-decent property. Compare that to Hyatt, where yes, the base earning is half what it is with most Hilton brands, but a Hilton property costs about 6-10x as many points as a comparable Hyatt (as little as 3,500 Hyatt points for an off-peak cat 1 or 5K Hyatt points for a standard cat 1, vs ~30-35K Hilton points for a similar ~$90-120 property). I regularly get at least $25 of value per thousand points with Hyatt redemptions. Even IHG is better than Hilton (Staybridges are often OK redeems, especially if you can get a 1-bedroom and not just a studio - and I don't have their credit card, but if you do, I guess you get every 4th night free, too).
I see a lot of travel bloggers focusing on the high-end aspirational properties, but not everyone aspires to stay at those properties. For those of us more focused on typical ~$90-to-$150-range properties, Hilton's been a joke since 2017; they've just finally killed the value of their high-end redemptions as much as they did their lower-end ones years ago. Glad I switched to Hyatt (with Marriott as a backup and IHG as a backup-backup).
Chris, fully agree, the real value to HH is in the mid-range properties, especially with 5-4-4. It's a mug's game chasing after over-priced resorts for a billion points. I find that 30K to 50K is the sweet spot. Then again I am in HH to save money and not to be an aspirational wannabe.
Hilton has been devaluing their program for years. Diamond status is irrelevant and easy to get with a credit card. Burn your points now before they devalue it again.
This can be said for every major loyalty program, really. Earn and burn is the name of the game. Shout out to a certain commenter here who would post paragraphs of copy (way before generative AI) just to basically say YMMV and brag about his extravagant breakfasts at Asian properties. Valuations really seemed to set him off. He also didn't understand what a boycott means. And apparently he was an academic. Will wonders never cease?
For what it's worth I just booked 5 nights at the 150k-a-night Milhaidoo Maldives. That's 600k (which I also value at $3k) a much better deal than if we had to pay cash ($18k with the seaplane transfer which the award booking includes).
To be fair, even 200k a night for that hotel (and probably for Waldorf Astoria Maldives too) is a good deal.
Exactly why they can feel like jacking up the rates because people like you think it's ok to jack up the cost so dramatically without warning because to be fair it's still on ok deal
I personally have been trying to move away from Hilton ever since they made the inexplicable change to switch all their pillows to down. I'm really allergic, and while I can request hypoallergenic pillows, they consider this a request, not a guarantee, and I hate the extra hassle of having to wait for them to find the pillow swhen I'm checking in late at night. Unfortunately, hilton has such a huge footprint and happens to...
I personally have been trying to move away from Hilton ever since they made the inexplicable change to switch all their pillows to down. I'm really allergic, and while I can request hypoallergenic pillows, they consider this a request, not a guarantee, and I hate the extra hassle of having to wait for them to find the pillow swhen I'm checking in late at night. Unfortunately, hilton has such a huge footprint and happens to own many of the conference hotels I end up at. This gives me one more reason to be cranky at them.
I booked South Bank last week at 130k, now it's 180k. Dodged a bullet there.
Obviously not good news, but as long as the free night awards can still be used for any standard room then I'm happy.
Hyatt is typically a better use for regular bread-and-butter points redemptions.
Looked at some hotels I'll be staying at this summer to see if they changed. Noticed Sowaka Kyoto is now up from 120,000 to 130,00. Thankfully already had my award reservations booked a while ago.
@Ben not sure what you mean by “up to”. The Pedregal now costs at least 190k. It jumped from 120 to 140 not that long at all. I think the deval is bordering on “major” depending on how widespread it is.
Lol and now the Hilton site is crashing...
At this point is it even worth chasing points and status for hotel programs?
Marriott does not miss a chance to show two middle fingers to all elite members.
Hilton keeps devaluing its program.
And even Hyatt had a major evaluation that went into effect in March
Same with airlines. There doesn't seem to be a good ending here for points. It's heading over a cliff and my name is not Thelma or Louise.
I've already cleared out my accounts on Marriott, Hyatt, delta, and working through ual. Flying blue is starting their devaluation so I imagine in a few years that's going away for me as well. Not a lot left after that. Going back to cash. It was a good run.
Hyatt did have a devaluation, but honestly they're still a very good program; still easy to get at least $25 per thousand points on redemptions, especially at more 'normal' lower-category hotels.
I have a long road trip coming up and booked several category 1 Hyatt nights for 5K points that were going for $120 or more (up to $253 in one case - $295 with tax - plus parking, normally $12 but included for me...
Hyatt did have a devaluation, but honestly they're still a very good program; still easy to get at least $25 per thousand points on redemptions, especially at more 'normal' lower-category hotels.
I have a long road trip coming up and booked several category 1 Hyatt nights for 5K points that were going for $120 or more (up to $253 in one case - $295 with tax - plus parking, normally $12 but included for me as a Globalist on award stays - coming out to $61/Kp!), and category 2 hotels that would otherwise be at least $200 including tax/parking if applicable (the highest being $274, or $34/Kp).
These aren't old crappy Hyatt Places, either; they include a couple newer/nicer Hyatt Places and Hyatt Houses and two full-service Hyatt Regencies (one of which I booked 5 nights at for 25K and used a Suite Upgrade Award for a confirmed one-bedroom suite that would've otherwise been $293 a night). At two more properties - one cat 4 and one cat 6 - I used Free Night Awards (one cat 1-4 and one cat 1-7); relevant cash rates would've been $303 and $509 respectively (including tax and parking). All have central-style air in the rooms and a pool and hot tub on-site. Heck, my *worst* redemption value on this trip is at a cat-5 Hyatt Centric on an off-peak night, where I did a points+cash rate that gets $17/Kp of value for the points portion, still easily 3x the max value one expects to get out of Hilton anymore.
Between the fact that there's still plenty of genuinely good lower-category Hyatts in the US (or an award chart *at all* for that matter), the still-useful Free Night Awards and confirmed Suite Upgrade Awards, and the consistent outstanding Globalist recognition including suite upgrades and late checkout (and *full* restaurant breakfast if no open lounge, and waived resort fees on all rates, and free parking on award nights, etc...), I can easily say it's still worth chasing Globalist.
As for Marriott...as much as I want to hate them for how often they screw the guest, I do kinda rely on guaranteed 4 pm checkout since I don't always know how well my health is going to cooperate with me. Other than Hyatt and them, I believe InterContinental Ambassador is the only other program to offer it guaranteed (and only at InterContinental locations, not the rest of IHG, of course) - so Marriott Platinum or above is pretty worthwhile for me, too. The rest...well, it's better than not having status, but maybe not worth going super out of the way for IMO.
"As of now, only a very limited number of properties seem to be impacted by this"
I typically use my points for stays in the Maldives and every property there has increased their standard points redemption. Besides the Waldorf you mentioned, the standard rate for the Conrad is now 140k up from 120k-130k, the Milaidhoo Maldives is now 170k up from 150k, Hilton Maldives Amingiri is 130k up from 110k. Even the SAii Lagoon Maldives is now 95k up from 80k.
I also just noticed this this morning. I was looking for a place to use a free night cert and saw a place on a map search showing 170k so at first I ignored it assuming it was a premium room. I ended up clicking through just because I was curious about the hotel and was surprised to see it was for a standard room.