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For the past several years Hilton has almost always been offering double points. That’s necessary, because without double points the program’s rebate value is lower than competitors. That’s also what we should expect.
The road map for where Hilton has gone with their program was laid out by Jeff Diskin, now Hilton Executive Vice President, back in 2010.
[B]eing over indexed in terms of the base level doesn’t give you enough payback because not enough people can understand or know what it is. We are actually recognizing that it’s much more important to have promotional activity in the marketplace to segment divide and conquer and put different initiatives in place for different groups of travelers. Not just by their tier level but also by the type–if they’re resort stayers or meeting planners–versus just having a core proposition which we over indexed.
He said the Honors program was giving too much basic value to members and it wasn’t generating enough value. They hadn’t been active with promotions. And that needed to flip. That’s exactly what’s happened.
Conrad Koh Samui
For May 6 through September 8 Hilton has offered double points, but only starting with your second stay during the promotion period however they offered a kicker of additional bonus points after 10, 15 and 20 stays giving members stretch goals.
- The casual stayer, which Hilton has gotten so much press by supposedly wanting to attract, wasn’t getting anything. And that’s after Hilton reduced the amount of points that base members earn.
- However power stayers were given stretch goals to reach.
Now, without skipping a beat, Hilton is out with its new promo and you’ll definitely want to register. Between September 9 and January 5 you earn:
- Double points
- However if you are a Hilton co-brand credit card customer you earn triple points
Conrad New York Downtown
Resource at ‘/content/hilton-promo/en_US/20190826_1780/promo-expired.html’ not found: No resource found
Cannot serve request to /content/hilton-promo/en_US/20190826_1780/promo-expired.html on this server
Apache Sling
I’m getting the same message, mk
Same website error for me too.
This was a good article but honestly I do get weary of reading “While we’re on the subject of free nights each year you spend $15,000 on the card you’ll earn another weekend night reward, which makes using the card certainly worth hanging on to.”
I mean, …. sigh.
Promo starts 8/26 and I’m told will be live the.
Tried to sign up but got to some kind of 404 error page lol.
“For the past several years Hilton has almost always been offering double points. That’s necessary, because without double points the program’s rebate value is lower than competitors. That’s also what we should expect.”
The claim won’t be true regardless of how many times it is repeated. The reality is, in fact, the complete opposite of what is claimed. For a rigorous proof that debunks the claim without making any assumptions about the subjective average redemption values of the various points currencies, and includes earnings from each programs best points-earning co-branded credit card, which must be included in any fair, balanced and realistic comparison, please read:
“No, The Base Earning for Hilton Honors Is Not Less Rewarding Than At Other Major Chains”
which can be found at this link: http://bit.ly/2IKuNjf
Welcome back to the comments @DCS!
I am fine 100% with the new HHonors promo. Right now I am staying in Berlin and finding Hilton Berlin about a wash with Berlin Marriott as Marriott Titanium and Hilton Diamond. With no Marriott Promo announced, I am for Hilton stays through the end of the year. As of Sept, 5, 2019, I will be 98 nights with Marriott. Surely, I cab squeeze 2 more nights with Marriott but why? I am Titanium for life anyway…
“[W]ithout double points the program’s rebate value is lower than competitors”
Well, “without a discount” a mattress would cost $2000, and “without a bonus” bankers would hardly make any money. What’s your point? It is what it is.
@Gary – he’s just trying to drive traffic to his sad excuse blog/vanity project (3 posts in 4 months, congrats)…don’t enable it!
Same error message I keep getting
Not sure what time zone Hilton’s servers are in (Tonga 🙂 ?) but they still show the error when registering even with most of the world being on the 26th.
Do you have to pay for the stay with your Hilton Amex, or does just having one trigger the triple points?
@dbeach – it is as I feared. You have to use your card to pay and get triple points. So those of us forced to use purchasing cards for business expenses are left out 🙁
For what it’s worth the site is now live and I was able to register without the error message…
@Gary — It’s just my sense of fair play. 🙂 With my own site now, pointedly called ‘TravelRealityCheck’, where I intend to be challenging travel various blogosphere claims as I just did here, it thought it would be only fair that I launch the challenges right at the *source* rather than from afar.
To ensure that our “duels” on various issues remain civil and focused, I solemnly pledge that I will not engage, not here or elsewhere and not ever, the commenter known as @UA-NYC, and you know better than anyone why that is wise.
With that out of the way, do you suppose that by making the earning of 3x **contingent on paying with a co-branded credit card** AMEX and Hilton may be sending you, @Gary, a not too subtle message that co-branded credit card earnings MUST included in estimating what you call “rebate” for the various programs, which you erroneous continue to claim Hilton Honors’ “is lower than competitors”?
With this promo, a HH Diamond paying a $100-stay with the Aspire card would earn:
54HH/$ * $100 = 5,400HH
which is huge by any measure. Since the effect of promos or co-branded CCs is to increase the size of the “rebate” or decrease the monetary costs of awards, it stands to reason that a program’s “rebate” is **not** a fixed number. It must estimated by taking into account the frequency and quality of a program’s promos as well as the number of points that members earn from co-branded CCs, which is really a constant for anyone who plays the game with a “full deck”.
Nice to be back!
This is the same DCS that lied repeatedly, ad nauseum, endlessly, over the years about Starwood benefits and T&Cs relative to Hilton, just to serve his fauxarguments.
Consider the source…