In the early days of frequent flyer programs people valued their airline miles, and hotel programs were an afterthought. Guests would stay at hotels and credit the hotel stay to their airline account.
Hilton had a real innovation to jump start its program: the “double dip.” The idea was that with each stay you could still earn your airline miles and also earn points in their HHonors loyalty program. That became the sine qua non of the Hilton program.
Firmly established though they began scaling this back with the elimination of ‘points and fixed miles’ back in 2013 (you would no longer earn a specific fixed number of airline miles, but could only earn miles as a function of spend). They dropped double dipping altogether in 2018 but promised that you could still transfer your points to miles if you wished.
Hilton Honors is all grown up. they dropped the second H from HHonors four years ago. And now they’re dropping many of their airline transfer partners, too – including Alaska Airlines, Avianca LifeMiles, and Hawaiian.
Effective June 15th, Hilton Honors Members will no longer be able to transfer Hilton Honors Points to airline miles with the following partners: Aeroflot, Alaska Airlines, Avianca, Amtrak, Finnair, Frontier Airlines, Garuda Indonesia, Hawaiian Airlines, LATAM Airlines, Philippine Airlines, & South African Airlines.
Transfer ratios have long been very poor. Since the option to move 10,000 Honors points to 1000 miles was bad to begin with, losing transfer partners will have limited effect on most. As it is, American Airlines isn’t a partner to begin with… but defunct Jet Airways is.
Note though that members were given zero notice of this change, which is shameful on the part of Honors leadership.
(HT: Loyalty Lobby)
Like the Weimar Republic.
The dropping is mutual.
sine qua non…what is this world coming to?
Hilton hotels are mostly dilapidated garbage. Can anyone really stand the beds and soaps in their HGI/Hampton brands ? Can’t believe they have even survived.
@Ryan: so the whole chain is no good because you don’t like the beds or soaps in the low end brand? But to answer your question: I am fine with the beds at HGI and last stay at a Hampton was good as well but that was a few years ago. As far as soaps, if you have an issue with hotel soaps on your poor sensitive skin, bring your own. Just say you aren’t a fan of Hilton, your criticism is a joke.
Regarding the transfer partners: who cares. If enough people used them in the past Hilton probably would have valued them as partners and found a way to continue the agreement.
@Ray — your bootlicking is the real joke. I have an ass, if you want to lick that too, please have your staff get in touch with me. What’s that, you have no staff because you’re a nobody? Then please, don’t lick my ass. About the transfer partners, “who cares” about the dropped feature, few people. Who cares about the principle that consumers should receive notice of changes like this, a lot of people.
Thanks for doing a good job in covering this issue. I was always refer your blog to people in the industry. Yes, I can be nice sometimes!
@Dickless in Urmommasanus: such a tough boy. Now get off the couch as mommy squeezes your pimples.
I don’t have any issues with the Neutrogena toiletries HGI and Hampton have. Nice, mild, gender neutral scent. That’s really one of the negatives?
GARY: Can you please have the team of 37 moderators on full salary review these horrific comments? Someone said, “ass.”
Thank you Hilton for giving your HH members NO NOTICE! With friends like this who needs enemies.
VERY customer unfriendly to spring this on us.
I really value my Hilton points, and almost never trade them, but I have occasionally moved small numbers of airline miles over to cover a deficit for redemption at some of their more aspirational properties. This simply lowers the number of possibilities.
I love using points opportunistically, and have continued to collect them even though both my travel is reduced and my travel stay choices have only seldom featured a Hilton property in the past three years. This marginally makes collecting them less useful. Hilton probably knows this will only slightly affect our perception of the program, but it is a harbinger of things to come and that is sad. Eventually, all these programs try to leverage loyalty to a select group of partners…… the utility of the points and their earning potential dry up, and this is how we will see a great innovation in improving these brands’ value (loyalty by ultra frequent travelers) get pissed away. Sad, but the 25 year old MBA bean counters they all employ dislike us and our “entitlement” and can’t help themselves but believe they can cost-cut their way to riches. Sadly for them and us, that’s not how it works…. We give loyalty the boot and stay at the nicest convenient hotel; they get fired after messing up results, but move on to another company and repeat as necessary.
Spot on @SST. Likely their board charges the ET with a job to cut costs, increase profitability, etc… which rolls down hill to some VP or Senior Director and rather than piss off people with the power to fire them by cutting the fat(like executive perks, compensation) they cut off fingers and toes(loyal customer satisfaction programs). Forget being fired, this damages their brand in future sales lost in a way they will likely never be held accountable for which is why it happens. And no notice even? I can’t even imagine how toxic and incompetent the corporate culture is at the executive level for someone to run this change through and that be okay.
Just found out that you can not transfer Hawaiian miles to Hilton. Very disappointed. No press release.