Hilton is making it easier to earn points for hotel stays starting Thursday, January 9. Specifically three things are changing.
- Earn points for more rooms. Currently you can earn points on up to two rooms at a time, that is changing to four rooms. So if you’re staying with family and friends, book everyone together and keep the points for yourself.
- No limit on how many points you can earn for stays. Hilton is eliminating the cap of 100,000 base points per stay (this cap already did not apply at Canopy, Curio, Tapestry Collection, Tru, Homewood Suites, Homw2 Suites or at the Waldorf Astoria Jeddah).
- Earn points on incidentals at all brands. Hilton didn’t used to award points for more than the room rate at Hampton Inn, Tru, Home2 Suites or Homewood Suites properties.
Hilton JFK
This is all good news. It means the ability to earn more points, with Hilton rewarding members for exactly what they want to be encouraging. And most importantly nothing is being taken away at the same time.
As far as what the points you’ll earn are worth, I value Hilton points at $0.004 apiece but since they no longer publish their award charts and don’t tell you when redemption prices change at a property there’s no future guarantee of value.
Nice to earn more points however they are pushing premium rooms at absurd amounts
2 or 3 nights in Maui for a million points? roll eyes
I did 3 nights @ Andaz Maui for 90k instead
Hopefully the new Hyatt changes coming this year wont suck bad
These positive changes and the last sentence of the post are a sure sign of devaluations in the hear future..
“As far as what the points you’ll earn are worth, I value Hilton points at $0.004 apiece but since they no longer publish their award charts and don’t tell you when redemption prices change at a property there’s no future guarantee of value.”
Meaningless statement because a loyalty points currency has no redemption value until the points have been redeemed! You estimate a Hilton point to be worth $0.004, and yet I just got a redemption value approaching $0.04 on a 5-night award stay at WA Maldives — i.e., about 10x more. What gives?
Another thing to remember is that the value of a points currency is NOT in *absolute* USD. It is in USD PER points currency denomination (e.g., $0.004 *PER* HH point or $0.01.2 *PER* WoH point). Thus, while a WoH point maybe worth ON AVERAGE 1.2cpp and a HH point 0.4cpp, it does not mean that a WoH point is “worth” 3 times more than a HH point because that compares apples and oranges. If one is confused by the preceding, then one has no business talking about it…
These HH changes are all positive, and continue the program’s dominance over its nearly non-existent competition.
G’day from my suite upgrade at WA PVG! 🙂
100,000 base points = $10,000 does it not? Who is affected by that cap? Is somebody staying in a San Francisco hotel for an entire month in a row?
” but since they no longer publish their award charts and don’t tell you when redemption prices change at a property there’s no future guarantee of value.” – this about sums it up. Its just not a program I am interesting in earning points in. I stay with hilton because of status level etc. Maybe I will spend 15k to get the weekend cert because I can value that, but the points? I rather earn less points with another program where at least I can have an idea of the value of them.
@DCS
“I just got a redemption value approaching $0.04 on a 5-night award stay at WA Maldives — i.e., about 10x more. What gives?”
” If one is confused by the preceding, then one has no business talking about it…”
I think you just answered your own question.
@Bill — Believe it or not, Hilton points are worth as much as if not more than other points precisely because of the ease of earning them [size of “rebate” for booking with points is bigger], which thus makes your statement that “Its just not a program I am interesting in earning points in” a head-scratcher….
@Dan — Trying to be cute and incoherent because you are confused does not work. Make a coherent argument that can be addressed.
These look like good changes to me that will reward the customers that Hilton should reward – people who are spending money (lots of it).
I’ve never really been one for point “valuations” because there are just so many factors that vary on a per-stay basis as to make it meaningless. However, as someone who does both Hilton and Marriott at the top elite level, I do see more value in Hilton these days – the multiple of Hilton/Marriott #s on earnings rate is generally higher than the multiple on redemption cost – that’s what matters, not absolute #s of points. It’s pretty hard to earn a lot of MR points these days.
Unrelated…it is ridiculous there isn’t a online shopping option to earn points anymore.
@DCS: “Meaningless statement because a loyalty points currency has no redemption value until the points have been redeemed!”
And yet, you are more than willing to try and equate Honors points with WoH and Bonvoy due to the relative ease of earning each of them, thereby assigning value to each of these points based on their earning.
You still can’t have it both ways, DCS, no matter how you try to move the goalposts to suit whatever argument you’re trying to make.
Hilton is a great place to work