Hilton is out with their fall promotion, “Stay More, Earn More” and you can register to earn 1,500 bonus points per stay October 1 – December 31, 2025. That’s generously worth about $6.

This makes me sad, especially because it comes on the heels of another weak offering from Hilton Honors. Their summer promotion was just 1,000 bonus points per stay, and ended August 15. It, too, came after a month-long break in promotions.

What they’re now offering is hardly unprecedentedly bad. It seems like it’s becoming the new norm, which is rough considering that Hilton’s program is actually the weakest among the major hotel chains. They had moved some of the base earning into promotions, essentially. Past non-stop promotions were key to making up the difference, and were usually do something like ‘double points’.

As a result, this weak promotion a big deal.

• Hilton has the weakest elite program. They don’t guarantee late checkout. They don’t guarantee upgrades to available suites (hotels are allowed to upgrade members to suites, but if they don’t do it they haven’t broken the rules of the program). The sine qua non of the Honors program used to be breakfast but the benefit rarely covers breakfast anymore.

  

• Really all that Hilton has is properties everywhere, and an SLH Hotels partnership that gives a lot of value redeeming your points. But a free night can now cost up to 250,000 points.

  

My grandfather used to describe something like this as ‘better than a hole in the head’. And… I guess. More points are better than fewer points even when it’s just 1,500 points. But there’s nothing in this offer that should encourage you to stay more with Hilton. I guess the answer to ‘why did they bother’ is so they could say they had a promotion.