Points Reckoning
Hilton Honors is a very reliable, but otherwise low value loyalty program. Because of their dependability and lack of blackouts, we’re deviating from our usual reduction factor of 25% and using 10 instead. Of course, this “low value” is relative, and not necessarily as bad as the number above would lead one to believe. First, the bad…we’re only assigning an ACRV of $0.0038 to each Hilton Honors point. However, this is offset by the fact they’re relatively easy to earn, 10 ppd for stays at Hilton properties. Furthermore, Membership Rewards transfer at a rate of 1:2. So transfer 1000 Amex points, get 2000 Hilton Honors Points.
| 30 Days Advance Booking ACRV | $0.0039 |
| 60 Days Advance Booking ACRV | $0.0037 |
| Combined ACRV | $0.0038 |
| 30 Days Advance Booking Non-Zero | $0.0043 |
| 60 Days Advance Booking Non-Zero | $0.0041 |
| Overall Non-zero Average | $0.0042 |
| Award Availability | 100% |
What the bell curve above tells us, is that one is almost guaranteed to redeem at a rate of ~$0.0042, give or take a few pennies. There is virtually no chance of a high-value award.
One really annoying quirk with Hilton’s web booking portal is the fact that one has better access to required points when not logged in to their Honors account. We’re assuming that because we keep a balance of 0 points, the system is somehow hiding award bookings. This is really annoying when one views Hilton as a potential transfer partner. In other words, how does one know how many points to transfer if the requirements are invisible?
Luckily, there’s a wonky work-around, private browsing. A quick little Ctrl+Shift+N opens an incognito window in Chrome. Frustratingly, now that Hilton doesn’t know who’s looking at their website, they display prices in both cash and points.
| Redemption Count | ||
| Exceptional | >$0.06 | 0 |
| Great | $0.04-0.06 | 0 |
| Good | $0.03-0.04 | 0 |
| Respectable | $0.02-0.03 | 0 |
| Acceptable | $0.01-0.02 | 0 |
| Terrible | <$0.01 | 20 |
| No Availability | 0 | |
The above table should be taken with a grain of salt, considering Hilton isn’t a 1:1 transfer partner. Sadly, even by doubling our ACRV, things still don’t look good. Our best for the month, was a week at the Hilton Toronto, offered for 198,000 points. The cash price was $1288.86, providing a redemption value of $0.0065.
So, is transferring a valuable Membership Reward to Hilton worth it? Maybe, but most likely no. If you were to duplicate our best redemption above, and factor in the 1:2 transfer ratio, you’d have an effective redemption of 1.3¢ on your Amex points. That’s starting to get into decent territory, but still nothing to brag about.
For more information about how we value airline/hotel and other award currencies, please visit our valuation method and changelog pages.
