50% Discount On Hilton HHonors Points – Should You Buy?

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Hilton HHonors is currently selling points with a 50% discount and, as the promotion isn’t targeted, this means that all Hilton HHonors members can buy points for just 0.5 cents each. The promotion runs through 5 December 2016 and, while a lot of points promotions can be a 50-50 proposition, this one definitely has the potential to save most Hilton fans some money.

Buy Hilton Points – Headline T&Cs

• Promotion runs through 11:59pm ET on 5 December 2016
• 50% discount available on all purchases of over 10,000 points
• Maximum purchase of 160,000 Hilton HHonors points per account per calendar year

Full terms and conditions available after you log in via this link

The Math

With no tiering the math for this promotion is a simple as it gets:

$500 for 100,000 Hilton HHonors points is equivalent to 0.5 cents per point

Should You Buy Hilton HHonors Points?

There are three obvious positives to this promotion:

1. This is the cheapest we’ve seen Hilton offer points (but they have been on offer at this price already this year)
2. The promotion isn’t targeted so everyone can participate at 0.5 cents/point
3. There is no tiering structure so, as long as you buy 10,000 points or more you will be buying at 0.5 cents/point – there’s no need to buy more points than you need.

This is what the Hilton Award chart looks like:

From the chart you can see that, at 0.5 cents/point this is how much hotels in the various categories will effectively cost:

• Category 1 – $25/night
• Category 2 – $50/night
• Category 3 – $100/night
• Category 4 – $100 – $150/night
• Category 5 – $150 – $200/night
• Category 6 – $150 – $250/night
• Category 7 – $150 – $300/night
• Category 8 – $200 – $350/night
• Category 9 – $250 – $400/night
• Category 10 – $350 – $475/night

Note: There are no taxes and fees to pay on award nights so those prices are the final cost/night.

Those prices should show you where there could be some very good deals to be had.

A category 2 hotel at 10,000 would cost you just $50 (£40 or €47) if you paid with points that you purchase in this promotion and even during Hilton’s sales you would pay more than that:

In the example above where the property costs $71 (£58 or €68) per night you would be saving 30% per night.

Further up the category chain there can be more deals to be had…even at the more high-end properties.

Take the Conrad New York as an example where a night in March will go for $429 + taxes or 70,000 Hilton HHonors points:

Once you add in the taxes the room cost balloons to almost $500….

….but if you booked the room with points purchased in this promotion it would cost just $350 (70,000 x $0.005).

That’s a huge saving!

A Word Of Advice

While you can definitely get some fantastic value out of stays booked with points in this promotion I wouldn’t be in too much of a hurry to book with points right now…at least not until the current Hilton promotions are over.

Right now Hilton is offering Triple HHonors points on all stays made by 31 December 2016 (if you book through the Hilton app) and a further 5,000 bonus points when you pay with a Visa card and stay before 31 January 2017.

There is also a Hilton sale in progress that covers Europe, the Middle East & Africa in which there are some very good deals to be had.

All those three together, make a compelling argument to pay with cash rather than points.

What I Suggest

1. Work out what Hilton HHonors points are worth to you – I value them at 0.4 cents each but I’m happy to buy them for more if I can see I’ll be saving money.
2. Decide where you’d like to visit and work out the cost of the hotel stay
3. Work out how many Hilton HHonors points you would be forgoing if you paid for the stay with points.
4. Work out the value of those points based on your valuation in point 1 – this is effectively the rebate you would earn for booking with cash.
5. Deduct the rebate from the cash cost of the hotel stay to give you the actual cost of your stay (should you pay with cash) and compare this to the cost of the stay if you were to pay with points purchased in this promotion.

Once you’ve completed point 5 you should have a very good idea of what saving (if any) you will be making by purchasing points in this promotion.

I suspect that, thanks to the triple points promotion on cash bookings, the savings on stays before 31 December will be small or even non existent…but the savings for bookings in 2017 could be well worth a points purchase.

Link to the 50% Discount on Points Purchases Promotion.