Hilton Just Revealed Hotels that Will Cost More Points (and Less) Starting March 30

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

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’.


Conrad Bangkok

At least they are announcing the changes. And savvy members could create a change detection for the page.

Hilton HHonors is making category adjustments to several hotels effective March 30.

24 get go up in category and 15 go down Overall a sliver of the overall HHonors portfolio, however:

  • When you make these changes several times a year it’s easy to make any given cohort of changes seem small. Inthe previous four quarters of announcements we’ve seen 89 hotels go up in category and 32 go down (that’s 3-1 increases over decreases).
  • More important Hilton no longer has to raise hotels a category to increase their price since they now have a range of prices within several categories. And there are no announcements when hotels get more expensive within a category thus we really can’t say whether there have been big increases or not.


Waldorf Hilton London

Here are the changes:

HOTELS WITH CATEGORY DECREASE

Hotel Name
City
State
Country
Previous Reward Category
New Reward Category
Effective Date
DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Hainan Qixianling Hot Spring Baoting China Category 6 Category 4 March 30, 2016
Hilton Petaling Jaya Petaling Jaya Malaysia Category 4 Category 2 March 30, 2016
Hilton Santa Fe – Mexico City Mexico City Mexico Category 6 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hilton Newcastle Gateshead Newcastle Upon Tyne United Kingdom Category 6 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Daytona/Ormond Beach Ormond Beach FL United States Category 7 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Dublin Dublin GA United States Category 3 Category 2 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Covington Covington LA United States Category 4 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Houma Houma LA United States Category 4 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn & Suites Thibodaux Thibodaux LA United States Category 4 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Broussard-Lafayette Area Broussard LA United States Category 5 Category 4 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Yazoo City Yazoo City MS United States Category 4 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn & Suites Center Center TX United States Category 3 Category 2 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Cotulla Cotulla TX United States Category 4 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Beeville Beeville TX United States Category 5 Category 4 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Victoria Victoria TX United States Category 5 Category 4 March 30, 2016

HOTELS WITH CATEGORY INCREASE

Hotel Name
City
State
Country
Previous Reward Category
New Reward Category
Effective Date
Hampton Inn & Suites Opelika Opelika AL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Jonesboro Jonesboro AR United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Phoenix/Glendale/Peoria Peoria AZ United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hilton Garden Inn Flagstaff Flagstaff AZ United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hilton Garden Inn Sonoma County Airport Santa Rosa CA United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hilton Singer Island Oceanfront Resort Singer Island FL United States Category 6 Caegory 7 March 30, 2016
Hilton Garden Inn Orlando @ Sea World International Center Orlando FL United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hilton Garden Inn Ft. Myers FL Ft Myers FL United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn & Suites Ft. Myers Colonial Rd Fort Myers FL United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn & Suites Cape Coral Cape Coral FL United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Hilton Garden Inn Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood Airport Dania Beach FL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Homewood Suites by Hilton Ft. Lauderdale Airport and Cruise Port Dania Beach FL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Bonita Springs/Naples-North Bonita Springs FL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Homewood Suites Bonita Springs Bonita Springs FL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn New Smyrna Beach New Smyrna Beach FL United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Atlanta / Fairburn Fairburn GA United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Gainesville Gainesville GA United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Douglas Douglas GA United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Milledgeville Milledgeville GA United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn By Hilton Leavenworth Leavenworth KS United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Raleigh / Town of Wake Forest Wake Forest NC United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
Hampton Inn Mansfield/Ontario Mansfield OH United States Category 2 Category 3 March 30, 2016
DoubleTree Portland Tigard Tigard OR United States Category 4 Category 5 March 30, 2016
Embassy Portland/Washington Square Tigard OR United States Category 5 Category 6 March 30, 2016

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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  1. The HGI and HWS at FLL are bumping to Cat 6…is this just to take more from the cruise ship pax that are forced to overnight?

  2. @Colleen Daytona native here, and I thought the exact same thing reading this. The Hampton Inn Daytona/Ormond Beach is not even in Daytona – it’s a little north in Ormond Beach. And it isn’t even one of the two local Hampton Inns on the beach (Daytona Beach/Beachfront and Daytona Beach Shores-Oceanfront) – it’s an Interstate hotel that’s about as far from anything you could be while still considered in the Daytona area.

  3. @Colleen, Jonathan – yep, same thoughts. Daytona-area native as well…very strange. All I can think is that they are trying to milk the bikers and race fans for all they’ve got, or they just plain want to deter award reservations so that they can price gouge. Now that said, it doesn’t surprise me at all that the NSB property jumped up a category because: 1) that’s a really nice Hampton and 2) NSB has become quite hip again with the moneyed retiree set.

    Also, Gary, you’ve gotta give it a rest on the Hilton devaluation jabs. Three years ago? We get it that you don’t like Hilton, but c’mon, man.

  4. Understood, Gary, but life goes on. You have my permission to not mention March 22 in every single AA article going forward! 😀

  5. Thanks for posting this, was just talking about burning some points in Sonoma later this year at the HGI so might as well book it now.

  6. Saw the Bangkok Conrad picture and freaked out. So no changes to that property at this time?

  7. Let’s use a new name for Hilton’s “loyalty” program -> “Hilton Dishonors”…like the “Delta Skypesos”..

  8. I didn’t see the link to click through to Hilton’s announcement, but you’re copy/paste has Hampton Inn Gainesville, FL going from Cat2 to 3. It’s a cat 6 (30k) point as of right now. So what gives?

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