Hilton has announced its new promotion called ‘Points Plus’ which sounds like something United would run. It’s a straight 1,000 bonus points per stay June 1 through August 15, 2025 (must check out by August 15 to earn). Register prior to your first stay. The offer applies to pre-existing bookings.
1,000 bonus points are worth about $4. And that’s all you earn regardless of how much you spend or how long you stay. It’s not even 1,000 points per night!
Hilton’s last promotion ended April 30, so there’s a month-long gap between promotions, and they’re pulling down their generosity right as it appears we’re heading into rough economic times that will likely affect hotel occupancy (and where we’d expect more generous offers to try to fill rooms).
The earning and redemption in Hilton’s program is actually the weakest among the major hotel chains. They moved some of the earning into promotions. They do promotions non-stop most of the time, without a gap between them. And they usually do something like ‘double points’. This makes up the difference, and can even put Hilton a bit ahead of others.
That makes 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).
- Really all that Hilton has is properties everywhere, and an SLH Hotels partnership that gives a lot of value redeeming your points.
Seeing a break in promotions, and such a weak offering, right when you’d expect Hilton to need to incentivize stays – even though summer is traditionally strong for stays – seems bad. The only ones really coming out ahead on this promotion compared to double points are members who do one night stays at under $100 per night. Not exactly who Hilton wants to reward the most?
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 1,000 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.
…did they forget a zero?
Just registered (thanks, didn’t hit my inbox yet), might as well get a 1,000 here and there. Huge fan of Hilton but hard to defend the value of this one. 2x promotion was decent, took good advantage of that.
Oh, come now, Gary… it’s always worth the ‘click’ (even $4-worth).
You included a nice photo of the New York Hilton Midtown… anything happen there lately?
*cough*
Gary its a cheap a/b test. Who registers when and do they use the promo vs the people who said why bother. Not all promos are designed to generate traffic some are designed to generate info.
We’ve been staying at Hiltons almost exclusively (~ 50-70 nights per year, and no Hyatts in the cities we regularly travel to) since the Amex Hilton Aspire card was launched in 2017, largely because the Aspire Diamond status plus Hilton promotion means 20-25% value back in points. There recently was a Marriott promotion on two of our non-Hilton Amex cards, spend $375, get $150. So, tried out some Marriotts and found them to be nicer, cleaner, slightly lower priced and more recently updated. With no Hilton promotion in May and this flimsy offer for June-August it’s looking like it’s time to say Bonvoyage to Hilton for the summer.
An A/B test involves the random assignment, not self selection, to either the A or the B condition, you complete, total, innumerate retard.
@Unintimidated — Sick burn. Sizzling. Bah. I’m sure @Michael Lissack meant well, but this could be a ‘confidently incorrect’ meme.
As my dad used to say, 4 bucks is 4 bucks. I’m just trying to get to Lifetime Diamond. I have the points and nights. Just need the years. Then Ima jump
To Marriott.
One can see why Hilton did not win (or even show up) at the Freddie Awards this year!