Hilton Honors

Hilton is one the world’s biggest hotel chains by revenue, with 7,000+ properties under 18 brands in over 110 countries. Hilton’s loyalty program, Hilton Honors, offers opportunities to collect points with the goal of redeeming them for free hotel stays.

With over 173 million members in its ranks, how does Hilton stack up against Marriott Bonvoy? Is Hilton a good hotel loyalty program for Canadians? Let’s explore the key aspects of the program and look at how we can best leverage Hilton Honors to unlock hotel stays at a fraction of the cost.

Earning Hilton Honors Points

There are a number of ways to earn Hilton Honors points, with the most common being staying at one of the 18 hotel brands within the Hilton hotels portfolio.

That being said, by far the fastest way to rack up Hilton Honors points is by signing up for co-branded Hilton credit cards, and using them for your everyday purchases.

Credit Card Signup Bonuses

There are four Hilton Honors co-branded credit cards, all of which are offered through American Express US. The lineup consists of three personal credit cards and one business credit card.

You can earn Hilton Honors points as a welcome bonus on each of the four cards, provided that you’ve never received a welcome bonus on that specific card before.

The number of Hilton Honors points you can earn through the welcome bonuses will fluctuate throughout the year. Since you’ll only be entitled to one bonus per card, you’ll want to make sure you apply for each card when the bonus is at, or close to, its historical all-time high.

The four Hilton Honors co-branded American Express credit cards are as follows:

Hilton Honors American Express Card

• Annual fee: No annual fee
• Highest recent welcome bonus: 100,000 Hilton Honors points

Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card

• Annual fee: $95 (USD)
• Highest recent welcome bonus: 150,000 Hilton Honors points

Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card

• Annual fee: $450 (USD)
• Highest recent welcome bonus: 150,000 Hilton Honors points

Hilton Honors American Express Business Card

• Annual fee: $95 (USD)
• Highest recent welcome bonus: 165,000 Hilton Honors points

In addition to the welcome bonuses, these cards also come with added perks and benefits for Hilton Honors members.

The no-annual-fee Hilton Honors card comes with Hilton Honors Silver status and the opportunity to earn Gold status if you spend $20,000 (USD) or more in each calendar year.

Next on the list, the Hilton Honors Surpass card comes with Hilton Honors Gold status, with an upgrade to Diamond status, the highest tier, if you spend $40,000 (USD) or more in a calendar year. With this card, you can also earn a Free Night Reward at a Hilton hotel or resort if you spend $15,000 (USD) in a calendar year.

Meanwhile, the more expensive Hilton Honors Aspire card comes with quite a few benefits, with the notable perk being the automatic Hilton Honors Diamond status just for having the card.

You’ll also automatically receive $250 (USD) in statement credits at participating Hilton resorts every anniversary year, and an additional $250 (USD) in airline fee credits per calendar year.

In addition to these benefits, you’ll also receive a Free Night Reward each card anniversary year, and you can receive a second Free Night Reward if you’re able to spend $60,000 (USD) on the card in a calendar year.

Lastly, the Hilton Honors Business card comes with automatic Hilton Honors Gold status and the opportunity to earn two Free Night Rewards. You’ll earn the first Free Night Reward once you spend $15,000 (USD) in a calendar year and the second if you spend $60,000 (USD) on the card in a calendar year.

Credit Card Spending

On top of earning a welcome bonus, you’ll also earn Hilton Honors points when you use your co-branded credit card for your everyday expenses. The number of points you can earn depends on the card you have and the category your expenses fall into.

With the Hilton Honors co-branded credit cards, you can expect the following earning rates:

Hilton Honors American Express Card

• 7x Hilton Honors points at Hilton hotels
• 5x Hilton Honors points at US restaurants, US gas stations, and US supermarkets
• 3x Hilton Honors points on all other eligible purchases

Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card

• 12x Hilton Honors points at Hilton hotels
• 6x Hilton Honors points at US restaurants, US gas stations, and US supermarkets
• 3x Hilton Honors points on all other eligible purchases

Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card

• 14x Hilton Honors points at Hilton hotels
• 7x Hilton Honors points at US restaurants, on car rentals from select companies, and on flights booked directly with airlines or with Amex Travel
• 3x Hilton Honors points on all other eligible purchases

Hilton Honors American Express Business Card

• 12x Hilton Honors points at Hilton hotels
• 6x Hilton Honors points at US restaurants, US gas stations, and on wireless telephone services from US providers, US shipping expenses, car rentals from select companies, and flights booked directly with airlines or with Amex Travel
• 3x Hilton Honors points on all other eligible purchases

Transferring to Hilton Honors Points

The American Express co-branded Hilton Honors credit cards aren’t the only way you can use credit cards to earn Hilton Honors points.

In fact, there are a number of programs that allow you to transfer points directly to your Hilton Honors account; although, if you’re in Canada, the options are more limited.

In Canada, the only available option is to transfer American Express Membership Rewards points to the Hilton Honors program at a 1:1 ratio. You can transfer in increments of 100 MR points, with a minimum requirement of 1,000 points.

In the US, you can also convert your American Express US Membership Rewards points to Hilton Honors points, but in this case, you’ll receive a better transfer rate of 1:2.

It’s also worth being aware that transfer bonuses come up from time to time, and with these, you’ll receive anywhere from 10–50% more Hilton Honors points when you transfer from American Express Membership Rewards.

Importantly, when deciding whether to transfer your Amex MR points to Hilton Honors, you’ll want to look at all of your transfer options first, as it may make more sense to redeem your MR points in other ways for increased value.

In addition, if you collect Diners Club Rewards, you can transfer your Diners Club International points to the Hilton Honors program at a rate of 1:1.6.

Finally, there are a number of airline loyalty programs that allow you to transfer miles to the Hilton Honors program; however, these are generally a very poor use of your miles, and you’ll be able to access better value by redeeming your miles for award flights.

Staying at Hilton Hotels

Outside of earning points through credit card welcome bonuses and daily spend, the best way to earn Hilton Honors points is through spending at one of Hilton’s 7,000+ properties.

You can, for instance, book through a special rate through Hilton Impresario and receive additional perks, such as free breakfast and a property credit, at no additional cost to you.

By default, you’ll earn 10 Hilton Honors base points for every $1 (USD) you spend at almost every Hilton hotel or resort.

The exceptions to this rate are Home2 Suites by Hilton and Tru by Hilton, where you’ll earn a lower rate of 5 Hilton Honors base points for every $1 (USD) spent.

On top of the base rate points, you’ll also have access to bonus points if you’re a Hilton Honors elite member. With Hilton Honors elite status, Silver members earn 20% more in bonus points, Gold members earn 80% more, and Diamond members earn 100% more in Hilton Honors bonus points.

Additionally, at certain hotels, Hilton also offers room rates that give members double points. While this room rate is normally more expensive than the base rate by $20 to $30 (USD), sometimes it happens to be the cheapest available rate, and in this case, it makes sense to book it.

Lastly, when booking multiple rooms for a single stay, you’ll only earn Hilton Honors points on a maximum of four rooms.

This means that if you’re booking a group trip with more than four rooms, you may want to spread the booking out over multiple accounts to fully access the available Hilton Honors points.

Promotions

Hilton will often run promotions throughout the year where you’ll have opportunities to earn even more Hilton Honors points on your upcoming Hilton stays.

Past promotions have included doubling the amount of Hilton Honors base points you’ll earn per stay, or offering an extra 1,000, 2,000, or 4,000 bonus points if you stay at specific Hilton hotels and resorts.

As promotions pop up, you’ll have to register for each one in order to be eligible for the benefits.

Milestone Bonuses

Milestone bonuses are an ongoing benefit offered by Hilton exclusively to Gold and Diamond elite members.

If you’ve got Gold or Diamond status, you’ll become eligible for milestone bonuses once you reach 40 qualifying nights at Hilton properties within the calendar year, with qualifying nights including both paid stays and award stays.

After reaching 40 qualifying nights, you’ll receive 10,000 Hilton Honors points as a milestone bonus, and you’ll continue to receive 10,000 bonus points for every 10 qualifying nights thereafter, with no limit to how many milestone bonuses you can receive.

Notably, if you reach 60 qualifying nights, you’ll earn an additional one-time bonus of 30,000 points, for a total of 40,000 points earned at this milestone.

Buying Hilton Honors Points

By far the easiest and quickest way to add to your Hilton Honors points balance is to buy points from the program directly.

This option is an effective way to top up your account when you’ve got your eye on a big redemption, and your account is a little bit short.

If you’re thinking about buying Hilton Honors points, you’ll want to make sure you do so during one of Hilton’s many promotions which offer bonuses on points purchases.

These promotions often include an up to 100% bonus for every point you purchase.

Outside of these promotions, Hilton Honors points cost 1 cent per point and given that we generally value Hilton Honors points at 0.5 cents (USD) or 0.7 cents (CAD), it rarely makes sense to buy at the market price.

Meetings and Events

You can also earn Hilton Honors points when you host an event at participating Hilton hotels. This could be a meeting, a conference, a wedding, or any other type of gathering.

The base earning rate for events is 1 Hilton Honors point per $1 (USD), up to a maximum of 100,000 points, but there are often promotions through which you may be able to earn up to 3 points per $1 (USD) spent on events.

Hilton Honors Dining

By signing up and linking a credit card or debit card to your Hilton Honors Dining account, you can earn Hilton Honors points at select restaurants.

As a base earning rate, every member receives 2 points per $1 (USD) spent at participating restaurants. You can amplify this rate by opting in for email notifications from Hilton Honors Dining, after which your earning rate will go up to 5 points per $1 (USD) spent.

If you dine at 11 or more participating restaurants in a calendar year and opt in for email notifications, you’ll reach the VIP level, bumping you up to an earning rate of 8 points per $1 (USD) spent.

Other Ways to Earn Hilton Honors Points

Hilton Honors points can also be earned through additional day-to-day activities, such as with rideshares and car rental companies.

One way to earn more Hilton Honors points is by linking your Lyft account with your Hilton Honors account. Through this partnership, you’ll earn 2–3 Hilton Honors points per $1 USD spent.

Additionally, when renting a car, you can earn up to 5,000 Hilton Honors points on bookings made with Alamo, Enterprise, and National.

Redeeming Hilton Honors Points

There are many ways to redeem your Hilton Honors points. However, the best way to redeem is by using your points to book free nights at Hilton hotels.

Hotel Stays

Hilton offers an extensive range of properties catering to every type of traveller, ranging from mid-tier, limited-service brands, such as Hampton Inn by Hilton, to luxury brands like Conrad and Waldorf Astoria.

Notably, Hilton Honors doesn’t publish an award chart, so the only way to determine how many points you’ll need for a stay is to search for a specific hotel on your desired dates of travel.

The points value of a one-night redemption ranges from 5,000 to 150,000 points, with the lower end representing more modest brands, like Homewood Suites by Hilton, and the higher end representing luxury properties, such as the Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi.

Before making a redemption, you’ll always want to compare the number points required with the cost of the booking for cash to make sure you’re getting a good value in the exchange.

“No Blackout Dates”

Hilton maintains a policy of having no blackout dates on award stays, which means that the program can be ideal for redeeming points when cash rates are high, such as during a holiday period or when a special event is in town.

However, keep in mind that the No Blackout Dates policy only applies to standard rooms, and that each hotel is free to use the “standard room” designation on however many rooms it chooses.

Fifth Night Free

When redeeming Hilton Honors points, members with Silver, Gold, and Diamond elite status can get the fifth night free when booking five or more consecutive nights at the same hotel.

For example, for a five-night booking at the aspirational Waldorf Astoria Maldives, you’d only need to redeem 150,000 × 4 or 600,000 Hilton Honors points for the stay, instead of the full 750,000 points.

Pay with Points & Money

In addition to outright points redemptions, Hilton also offers a flexible redemption option known as Pay with Points & Money where part of the stay can be covered with points, and the remainder using cash.

You can redeem as little as 5,000 points to reduce the cost of a stay, and once this minimum redemption threshold has been reached, additional points can be redeemed in 1,000-point increments.

Using Pay with Points & Money typically gives you a value of around 0.8 cents USD per point; however, the savings are not perfectly linear, so it’s good to check the value with each redemption.

Other Ways to Redeem Hilton Honors Points

Hotel stays will always give you the best value for your Hilton Honors points, but there are also a few other options available in case you don’t have any upcoming travel planned.

Shopping with Points

Hilton Honors is pretty unique in offering the opportunity to redeem points on Amazon.com purchases. Once your Hilton Honors account is linked to your Amazon.com account, you’ll be able to use your Hilton Honors points at checkout.

The redemption rate is a flat 500 Hilton Honors points per $1 (USD) on Amazon.com. This calculates to a redemption rate of 0.2 cents (USD) per point, which is well below the value of a point used towards hotel stays.

Transferring to Airline Programs

Hilton Honors points can also be transferred to over 40 airline loyalty program partners. Unfortunately, the conversion ratio is typically around 10,000 Hilton Honors points to 1,000–1,500 airline miles/points, which isn’t great value in any light.

You should only transfer your Hilton Honors points to airline programs if they’re about to expire and you truly have no other uses for them.

Hilton Honors Experiences

In addition to the above redemption options, Hilton offers a range of experiential redemptions, typically focusing on unique musical or sporting events, or food experiences around the world.

There is a mix of auction-style opportunities, which can get very expensive very fast, and fixed-rate redemptions.

Car Rentals

You can also redeem Hilton Honors points for car rentals with Alamo, Enterprise, and National.

There is no published redemption chart; however, redeeming your points for car rentals will certainly provide far less value than redeeming your points for hotel stays.

Lyft

Linking your Lyft and Hilton accounts is a great way to earn Hilton Honors points. However, using the partnership to redeem your Hilton Honors points for Lyft services provides terrible value.

In fact, Lyft and Hilton have published a redemption chart, and it works out to 0.2 cents (USD) per Hilton Honors point – far below the value you should be hoping to get for your points.

Ticketmaster

Lastly, you can redeem Hilton Honors points for purchases at Ticketmaster.

Much like the other alternative redemption options, you’ll want to make sure you’re comparing the cash price with the potential points value, as you’ll still access better value redeeming your points for hotel stays.

Hilton Honors Elite Status

Like most hotel loyalty programs, Hilton Honors offers members the ability to earn elite status, which in turn provides perks and benefits on stays at Hilton hotels.

Beyond the basic entry-level membership, Hilton Honors has three elite status tiers: Silver, Gold, and Diamond.

Qualifying for each elite tier can be achieved one of three ways: staying a specific number of nights, completing a specific number of stays (regardless of how many nights are in each stay), or earning a specific number of base points (not including bonus points from credit cards, promotions, or from already having elite status).

To qualify for Hilton Honors elite status, you’ll need one of the following to access each associated tier:

• Silver: 10 nights, 4 stays, or 25,000 base points
• Gold: 40 nights, 20 stays, or 75,000 base points
• Diamond: 60 nights, 30 stays, or 120,000 base points

Additionally, to help you reach your next elite status a bit quicker, Hilton has a program called Elite Rollover Nights.

With this program, at the end of each year, if you were a Silver elite member or higher, any qualifying nights above those necessary to earn your current status tier are counted towards your status tier for the following year.

For example, if you earned 38 qualifying nights in a calendar year, you would have reached the requirement for Silver status (10 nights), but you would still be two nights short of requirement for Gold status.

With the Elite Rollover Nights program, come January 1st, 28 of those qualifying nights (38 minus the 10 that got you Silver status) are automatically applied to your account, helping you get a jumpstart on next year’s elite status.

Another way to fast track to one of the above status levels is by holding the right credit card from American Express or by reaching a specific spend threshold on your card.

With the four co-branded American Express US credit cards, you’ll have instant access to Hilton Honors elite status at the following tiers:

• Hilton Honors American Express Card: Automatic Silver status, plus spend $20,000 (USD) per year to acquire Gold status
• Hilton Honors American Express Surpass Card: Automatic Gold status, plus spend $40,000 (USD) per year to acquire Diamond status
• Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card: Automatic Diamond status
• Hilton Honors American Express Business Card: Automatic Gold status

Having Hilton Honors elite status comes with an array of different benefits. The full list of elite status benefits can be found on Hilton’s website, but some key benefits worth highlighting are:

• Access to the Fifth Night Free for Silver, Gold, and Diamond members when using Hilton Honors points for the stay of at least five consecutive nights at one hotel
• Daily food and beverage credit, or complimentary breakfast, for Gold and Diamond members (subject to availability)
• Exclusive lounge access at participating hotels for Diamond members

Elite Status Match

If you have elite status with a competing hotel loyalty program, and you’re currently a basic member or a Silver elite member with Hilton Honors, you can take advantage of Hilton’s Elite Status Match offer.

This program provides a once-per-membership opportunity to quickly upgrade your Hilton Honors status. You can easily register for the status match online with Hilton directly.

Once approved, you’ll automatically receive Hilton Gold status for 90 days. If you stay eight nights during this time, you’ll be able to keep your Gold status until the end of March two years from the year you applied for the status match.

Additionally, if you stay 14 nights in the 90-day Gold status period, you’ll be upgraded to Diamond status, which will also be yours to enjoy until the end of March two years from when you completed your qualifying nights.

Tips & Tricks

As with any loyalty program, there are several tips and tricks unique to Hilton Honors that can help you squeeze even more value out of the program.

No Resort Fees on Award Stays

Unlike other hotel programs, Hilton doesn’t charge resort fees on award stays or promotional free stays (such as credit card free nights). This can add up to significant additional savings at many aspirational resort properties around the world.

Points Pooling

Hilton offers free points transfers and points pooling among multiple accounts, which is perfect for sharing your points with your friends, family, or anyone else. You can pool your points online through a simple and intuitive process, which makes playing in two-player mode a breeze when you’re collecting Hilton Honors points.

In fact, you can add up to 10 other members to your pool and freely transfer Hilton Honors points in increments of 1,000, up to a maximum of 500,000 points sent and 2,000,000 points received per calendar year.

Conclusion

As the loyalty program of the world’s second-largest hotel chain, Hilton Honors unlocks a world of options for earning free hotel nights.

Hilton Honors points can be easily earned through American Express co-branded credit cards, and the points can be readily redeemed for stays at one of over 7,000 Hilton hotels.

The opportunities for good-value redemptions at aspirational and mid-tier properties alike, as well as the relative generosity of the elite program, make Hilton Honors a program that’s worth your attention.