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Buy Hilton HHonors Points 80% Bonus
For four days only — through July 18 — is offering a bonus of 80% on purchased points.
Hilton usually charges a penny apiece for points, so with this bonus is selling points for a little over half a cent each. That’s not the absolute cheapest I’ve ever seen (June 2015 they offered a 100% bonus). Here they’re selling points for just a little over what they’re worth.
Hilton will let you buy up to 80,000 points per year, plus bonuses. The pricing here amounts to $0.0055555 per point. I value Hilton points at $0.004, since I can pretty much always get half a cent in value at least from Hilton points and I have a preference for holding cash.
Conrad New York
You can really stretch Hilton points for their lower-tier redemptions. A category 1 property is 5000 points, with 5th night free for elites, so a 5 night stay averages 4000 points per night or ~$22. (There aren’t many of these in the U.S…)
You won’t get bonus points for paying for purchased Hilton HHonors points with a Hilton co-brand credit card, as the purchase is processed by points.com rather than Hilton.
I’m close to a buyer of Hilton points at half a cent apiece.
Buy Hilton HHonors Points 80% Bonus
Terms and conditions:
HHonors Points purchased do not count towards elite tier qualification. Hilton HHonorsTM and Points.com reserve the right to change or terminate the bonus promotion at any time. All purchases must be made through the Purchase page on HHonors.com. The HHonors Points 80% Bonus is available on Points purchases made between July 14, 2016, at 12:01am ET and July 18, 2016, at 11:59pm ET. When gifting HHonors Points the HHonors member receiving the Points will receive 80% more Points as a bonus. All purchases are non-refundable. HHonors Members may purchase a maximum of 80,000 HHonors Points per calendar year. Offer cannot be combined with any other offer. Points will be posted to the recipients Hilton HHonors account within 24 hours of the completed transaction. Buy transactions are final and non-refundable. All Hilton HHonors program terms and conditions apply. Hilton HHonorsTM membership, earning of Points and MilesTM and redemption of Points are subject to HHonors Terms and Conditions.
Gary said… ‘You can really stretch Hilton points for their lower-tier redemptions.’
dhammer53 says If you can find that’s of interest to you. 😉
@dhammer53, travelisfree has a good writeup about these low-cost redemptions — especially in Egypt. Some pretty solid looking resorts @ 5k (4k with 5th night free) per night.
@dhammer53
Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Austria for five nights comes out to 8,000 a night.
Isn’t it funny how a sale on overvalued HHonors points provides yet another opportunity to plug Citi cards.
I rarely see better than .005 value per point at the higher end aspirational properties like cities and resorts, which of course are the only ones of real interest. I don’t think many of your readers are looking to redeem at HGI Bakersfield or other flyover locations.
However you miss one of the prime benefits to using points which is the ability to make a speculative booking without any penalty for change/cancellation. I’ve done this numerous times – it allows me to lock in a room without worrying about the price going up (or forfeiting the nonref deposit).
So while .005 point is a bit less than they are really worth for redemption, it does provide a quick way to boost balances, and one of the only ways to do so for those of us who already have the credit cards.
Boraxo nailed it. Points are often the best choice, even at a value slightly less than their cost, for iffy bookings.
For USA domestic AA flights, Southwest points and Avios have this same utility.
Anybody knows if 5th night free also applies to points+cash stays?
“However I’d suggest the no annual fee Citi® Hilton HHonors™ Visa Signature® Card as a better alternative since there’s a limited-time offer right now of 75,000 points after spending $2,000 in the first three months.”
Let’s see…
— Option1: For $800, one purchase get 80K points and get 64K (from the 80% bonus) for a total of 144K points
— Option 2: For a minimum spend of $2,000, one would get 75K points, and a card that one is not likely to use very much unless on stays frequently at Hilton properties [the AMEX Surpass would be better for this purposes anyway].
$800 yield 144K points while $2,000 yield 75K points, how can the latter option possibly be “a better alternative”???
The only way Option 2 makes any sense would be if (a) one really wants the card and (b) one can apply for it, be approved and get it by July 18 to use to purchase the points for this sale thus making the $800 part of the $2K minimum spend, and ending up with 144K + 75K = 219K points. However, condition (b) cannot be realistically fulfilled by July 18, so, therefore, Option 2, which I assume “Or use the two offers in conjunction for even more Hilton HHonors points” referred to, makes no sense…
— Option1: For $800, purchases 80K points and one gets 64K (from the 80% bonus) for a total of 144K points
@Grant “Hilton Garden Inn in Vienna, Austria for five nights comes out to 8,000 a night” sounded great. Until I read the Trip Advisor reviews. Apparently in the Summer the ‘air conditioning’ (sic) is centrally set at 90 degrees. Considering the type of sleep I get at 90 degrees that makes it way too expensive. Doubly ironic, since the average nightly low this week is in the mid 50’s, with the highs ranging from low 60s to low 70s.
I was about to say maybe stay there in the winter, but I’m guessing then they will have the “heat” set at 62. 😉
@DCS, comparing sign-up bonus spend to purchasing outright is apples to oranges. If i’m going to spend $2,000 in 3 months on groceries, gas, etc, anyway, signing up for the citi cards gets me 75k points basically for free (since I’m spending that money on things I need regardless). To outright buy the points, that’s spending $800 out of pocket.
If someone has a specific Hilton redemption in mind and needs to top off their balance, I would agree with you that buying outright is the right choice. But if people don’t have an award in mind and want to pad their Hilton balance speculatively, then applying for the card and getting the points for free may be the better option.
That said, those people who want to accrue speculative hilton points clearly have bigger problems to deal with…
@Hurtswith2 — YMMV because I would do neither of those things (i.e. purchase HH points at a discount or sign up for a card just to get bonus HH points) since I get most of my points — loads of them — through revenue stays at HH hotels. However, I suspect that one gets ahead with just purchasing the points in this case because it is hassle-free, it is relatively inexpensive, one won’t have to acquire a card that one will seldom use or will simply cancel, and leaving one with the option to spend the $2000 on a different card that earns points or miles that one actually needs…