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.