Hilton Honors Points : How Much Are They Worth?

Today we're going to talk about Hilton Honors points specifically. We're going to talk about their value here on YouTube, and especially in the credit card space. Once something is stated, then it is generally repeated over and over again until it becomes some type of rule.

I can't tell you how many times I've read or heard Hilton points are only worth around 0.4% or 0.5% per point, or Hilton points just don't have any value. Today I'm going to tell you that none of these things are true, no matter how many times it is repeated. I'm going to show you how much Hilton Honors points are currently worth, at least in my random use cases.

I think it may change the way you calculate their value. But first, if you are new here we talk about credit cards, points, miles, cash, and travel.

Hilton Hotels - The Hilton Family Hotels

Hilton Hotels is one of the largest hotel chains in the world, with hundreds of properties and hundreds of thousands of rooms. The Hilton Family Hotels includes budget properties such as the H2 line and Hampton Inns, as well as high-end luxury hotels like the Conrad and Waldorf Astoria.

If you are a Hilton loyalist, comment below which is your favorite Hilton brand. Hilton's loyalty program is called the Hilton Honors Program and they use the Hilton Honors Point. Hilton also partners with American Express to produce co-branded credit cards. We have full reviews on all these cards if you really want to get into the details.

But for this video, I just want to note that there is an entire suite of cards, from the no annual fee Hilton Honors card to the 450 Hilton Honors Aspire premium travel credit card. They also cover the middle ground with a 95% annual fee Hilton surpass card, as well as the very similar 95% a year business card. It's a full-service, well-thought program offering lots of award redemptions and benefits.

Today I want to focus specifically on the points and I'm going to show you exactly what kind of value I'm getting for my Hilton Honors points. First, some background. I currently hold the American Express Hilton Honors Aspire card and the American Express Hilton Honors surpass card.

While I rarely use the aspire card for daytoday spend, the surpass will get 15,000 dollars worth of spend put on it in (22:22). Also, Hilton is my preferred hotel program, so the majority of my stays are in Hilton Hotels and I normally redeem points for stays and I use cash maybe $10 of the time.

Hilton Honors Points - What's the Difference?

I mentioned earlier in the video that published values for Hilton Honors points are generally 0.4% to 0.0% per point. Now I will admit I don't like using the cents per point value system very often, but I want to demonstrate how. In my use case, this is not an accurate portrayal of the value of Hilton Honors points. I currently have almost $11.2 million Hilton Honors points deployed, meaning I have that many points tied up.

In future reservations, I'm going to go over each reservation and run the value individually and then all together. Now this study is absolutely not a scientific one, but it is my personal redemptions, so it will show exactly how much value I'm getting in a random selection of redemptions. So let's get to the numbers, and later we can argue. Also, I don't want to give every detail about every Redemption for obvious reasons. I don't want a giant band of beautiful women waiting for me and my family in the hotel lobbys. I'm a happily married man, but I'll give you enough information to satisfy the exercise. First, Redemption Redemptions.

Redeeming Hilton Honors Points

Is that my wife's favorite hotel, the Roosevelt and New Orleans? This is a Waldorf Astoria property and it's where we stay when we visit the Big Easy, our second or third home. Super quick two-night trip for us and we redeem $140,000 Hilton Honors points. Cash price for the stay would have been $1,658. This is an area where we swirl sometimes.

We fly in economy most of the time, but we really like this property and it is our little couple retreat. This comes to a value of 1.18 cents per point, far from the point, for other folks have quoted and constantly repeated. At the end we will talk a little about why this value is so high. In this case it is a football weekend. Next up in my reservations is for three nights at the Hampton Inn in Savannah, Georgia. This one was 100 and 8,000 Hilton Honors points, but the cash price would have been $1,774 dollars. This one is a bit of an outlier because it is Patrick's Day and apparently that's a really big deal.

In Savannah, Georgia, Hilton Honors points come to $985 cents per point. Not bad. Next up is a different sort of redemption in that it is a 10-day stay. So remember, with the Hilton Honors program, when you book five nights, the fifth night is free. So booking a 10-night stay with points, you'll get two nights free. This one is at the Hilton Waiki Village in Honolulu, so I know so touristy. But so what? I redeem $560 000 Hilton Honors points for this one and that cash price would have been $4 thousand, $200, and $9 dollars. All right, we'll be honest.

I can't imagine spending that much cash for part of a vacation, but it's with this credit card game that I'm able to do these things. This one is also not Peak travel time, so I'm thinking the cash rate was a little lower than it could have been. The point value for this one is a modest 0.75, still a far cry from half a cent. finally, we have my favorite hotel that I have everstayed at, and that is the Conrad Fort Lauderdale Beach.

This is during spring break. I've had to schedule my traveling when my son is not in school, so I have to fight the crowds. I guess I could have worse problems. I'm sure this three-night stay was a $70,000 Hilton Honors points that pretty much drained my bank, but it was much better on my wallet than the $36,96 dollar cash price. It's a super nice hotel, but I don't think I could pay that price for three nights anywhere. 1.4.3 cents per point. That's an impressive value, if you ask me so. These are my next four redemptions total value, and let's total it all up. We're redeeming $1 million (1,75 000 Hilton Honors points), which, I'll admit, sounds like an embarrassment of riches, but these points are allowing me and my family to experience $10,925 dollars in hotel stays.

This gives me an average value of 0.93 per point. These are properties that I would not be able to stay at at their listed price because I'm too poor. That's why I'm big on the credit card game and big on the Hilton Honors points. specifically, you can always find cheap flights, but so many people will never get to stay at these properties. My goals are twofold: To get to make memories with my little boy, while he's relatively young and still kind of likes me, and I get to escape for a couple nights with my wife. I'm no marriage expert, but I think that helps maintain a relationship. I mean she's not exactly with me, for my ruggedly handsome looks.

Revenge Travel Up Charge

okay. So two sides of this coin. The only reason these redemption values are so high is because travel is crazy right now and prices are all dropped up. Okay, let's say, prices are higher than normal. They're still the prices. It's another reason why points and miles and the credit card game is so valuable now.

Prices of everything are up and who knows if they'll ever come back down. I'm able to book these trips without getting crushed by the Revenge travel up charge. But Luke, those prices are high because there are special events during some of those times. Again, you are right, Savannah hosts one of the biggest Patrick's Day celebrations in the world, and it's my anniversary.

I'm also going to the Saints Bengals game in New Orleans, and spring break is always expensive. I don't like that argument, because that are also the reasons why I'm traveling there. sorry, Savannah, but I'm not spending a random Wednesday there. So the price is the price and the value is well, it's the value. I surely didn't book these trips because they were more expensive than usual.

Hilton Honors Points - Is It Worth More Than 0.5% Per Point?

Another view is that the Hilton Honors point is worth much more than the established 0.5%s per point, and then folks will argue that yes, but you didn't book hotels that had poor redemption values. uh yeah, why would I? Here on planet Earth, we normally have choices?. That is one of the advantages of being part of the Hilton loyalty program. I can normally find multiple options close to where I want to stay.

So at the end of the day, I'm not going to tell you that Hilton Honors points are worth 0.93 cents per point, but I will tell you that I deployed over a million points and that is what I got. guys, if you like this sort of content, hit that like button for me and let YouTube know. One other thing I'd like to address, so many experts will tell you that you should never transfer American Express membership rewards to Hilton because it's not a good value. This is a personal decision, but I just transfer value, transferred some over today at a ratio of 1 Mr point to 2.6 Hilton Honors points. This means I am getting roughly 2.4 cents per point for the original Mr Point according to my redemptions. I don't think that is all that bad.

I think transfer during a bonus can be a great deal, but your mileage may vary. I'd also like to mention that the Hilton Honors no annual fee card gets five times back on groceries, gas and restaurants. Using my latest valuation, that is 4.65% back when redeeming for Hilton stays. That's pretty impressive for a no annual fee card now. obviously, there will be some comments that when someone checked they could only get point 3 cents per point on several hotels for years, but this is my experience, and I promise you I'm not special. These points can bring quite a bit of value. If you like the Hilton loyalty program.

guys, if you have time, check out my links below, especially the Racketon Cashback Shopping portal. Use my link and get $30 cash back on your first purchase, and, as always, guys, if you have stayed around all the way to the end, I appreciate you and I thank you.

Conclusion

Hilton Honors points are worth 0.5% per point, this is the most recent value we've seen on the Hilton website. We'll show you how much Hilton Honors are currently worth. We also talk about how to use points to get more cash. We're also going to talk about points in other areas of the travel industry. We talk about credit cards, points, miles, and cash. We hope you'll enjoy the show. We will be back in a week or so with a new video. We are now on YouTube. We have a new channel, and a new show.