The Hilton HHonors Hotels That Are About to Cost You More Points — and Those That Will Require Fewer

by Gary Leff

After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly two years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year.

And Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of ‘transparency’.

At least they are announcing the changes. And savvy members could create a change detection for the page. Moreover, they’re informing folks on frequent flyer forums as well: 21 hotels are going up in category (and thus points price) while 12 go down.

Towards that end, Hilton is making category adjustments to several hotels effective October 8.

These changes haven’t yet been posted on the reward category upgrade page but I expect that will happen today.


Hotels with Category Increase:

  1. The Morrison Dublin, a DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel – New Category: 7
  2. Conrad Dublin – New Category: 7
  3. DoubleTree by Hilton London Victoria – New Category: 7
  4. DoubleTree by Hilton London Marble Arch – New Category: 8
  5. Hampton Inn Florence-Midtown – New Category: 3
  6. Hampton Inn Clarksville – New Category: 2
  7. Homewood Suites Richmond Airport – New Category: 3
  8. Hampton Inn Silver Spring – New Category: 4
  9. Hampton Inn Medford – New Category: 5
  10. Embassy Suites Palmdale – New Category: 5
  11. Hampton Inn and Suites Ocala – New Category: 5
  12. Homewood Suites Medford – New Category: 5
  13. Homewood Suites Atlantic City/Egg Harbor – New Category: 5
  14. Doubletree Club Hotel Boston-Bayside – New Category: 6
  15. Hampton Inn & Suites Boston Crosstown Center – New Category: 6
  16. Hilton Boston Logan Airport – New Category: 7
  17. Hampton Inn & Suites Ocean City Bayfront / Convention Center – New Category: 7
  18. Hilton Boston Back Bay – New Category: 8
  19. Hilton Boston Financial District – New Category: 8
  20. Hilton Carlsbad Resort and Spa – New Category: 8
  21. Waldorf Astoria Chicago – New Category: 10

Hotels with Category Decrease:

  1. Hilton Garden Inn Rzeszow – New Category: 1
  2. Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa – New Category: 9
  3. Hilton Garden Inn Kutahya – New Category: 1
  4. Hampton Inn Ordu – New Category: 1
  5. Hilton Garden Inn Mardin – New Category: 2
  6. Hilton Kayseri – New Category: 2
  7. Hampton Chattanooga Airport – New Category: 3
  8. Hampton Inn Henderson – New Category: 3
  9. Hampton Inn Jacksonville East/Regency Square – New Category: 3
  10. Hampton Inn & Suites Center – New Category: 4
  11. Hampton Tucson-North – New Category: 4
  12. Hampton Shelbyville – New Category: 4

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. The Double Tree Marble Arch doesn’t in my opinion deserve to be category 8. I had a bad stay in this hotel recently and it would be waste of points (and money) in my opinion.

  2. Thanks for the list. Obviously pretty obscure stuff. I have stayed at the Kayseri Hilton a couple of times, while passing through that city’s airport on the way to Turkey’s famous Cappadocia region. A nice hotel. It would be a terrific deal at Cat. 2, especially if you were at least HHonors Gold and got the free buffet breakfast.

  3. Bigger no no is their propensity for shifting hotels within a category with no notice. Like some hotels are Category 8 (40K to 70K) and are now ALWAYS 70K whereas once it varied. No notice. This happened over night. Much bigger shadow deval.

  4. No Idea why all the Boston hotels are increasing in categories. The Hyatt choices, and IC boston are already better picks for less points.

  5. Hilton Boston Logan Airport – New Category: 7
    ==================================

    We all know that’s a Cat 2. But if it’s to keep the Duval Patrick/Obama-ite voters away, I have no problem with that.

  6. BOS is a growing (grown up?) hub for Delta. Maybe is one Jeff from DL and one Jeff from HH at work 🙂

Comments are closed.