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Q. When is a sale not really a sale?
A. When the sale price is offered on more days of the year than the non-sale price.
Hilton is back with yet another mystery points sale just a couple of weeks after the last points sale ended, so it’s probably time that we stop thinking of these events as ‘sales’ and start thinking of the times when a sale isn’t on as an aberration.
Assuming that your ‘mystery bonus’ is as high as 100% (which for a lot of people it seems to be), you can now buy Hilton points from as little as 0.5 cents each and, as usual, with the cost of points now relatively low and with hotel cash rates still stubbornly high, the current cost to buy points could open up could be an opportunity to make some impressive savings on an upcoming high-end Hilton stay.
Key terms
- Points purchased do not count towards elite tier qualification.
- All purchases must be made through the Purchase page on HiltonHonors.com.
- The 100% Points bonus campaign is available for purchases of 5,000 or more Points made by November 27, 2024, at 11:59pm ET.
- Members may purchase a maximum of 160,000 points per calendar year.
- All purchases are non-refundable.
- Offer is subject to change.
- Points will be posted to the recipients Hilton Honors account within 48 hours of the completed transaction.
- Price includes all applicable fees.
- GST/HST will be charged to Canadian residents. QST will be charged to Quebec residents.
- Points purchased are final and not refundable and are applicable towards all Honors Terms and Conditions.
- Purchased points do not count towards Honors status upgrades.
Link to Hilton’s points sale where you’ll find the full terms and conditions
The numbers
The math for the promotion most people seem to have been targeted for is straightforward – as long as you buy at least 5,000 Hilton Honors points you’ll get a 100% bonus and pay just 0.5 cents each for them.
One of the major bonuses of Hilton’s point sales is that Honors members aren’t forced into buying more points than they need just to get the best cost/point.
Thoughts
There are a few positives to this offer, so this is probably a sale worth considering if you’re a Hilton fan:
- A 100% bonus is the best deal we usually see Hilton offer.
- Points are on sale for 0.5 cents each and that’s close to our valuation of 0.4 cents each.
- You only have to buy 5,000 points to lock in the best price/point, so there’s no need to splash out on more points than you actually need in order to get a good deal.
- You may only be able to buy up to 320,000 points in this sale, but if you need more, Hilton’s free pooling option will let you pull together more than enough points for a multi-night stay at most of Hilton’s best properties worldwide.
The key to making the most of this sale lies in doing your homework and having a plan for any points that you buy. It’s incredibly easy to click a few links and pay for a stack of points, but it takes a little bit of work to make sure you’re not throwing your money away.
The best way to proceed is to check the cash rates at whatever property (or properties) you’d like to visit and then compare those rates to the cost of an award night booked using points purchased at 0.5 cents each.
The Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills can be used as a good example of how this sale can save a Hilton Honors member a lot of cash:
On a randomly selected night next May, the best-priced room at the Waldorf Beverly Hills cost $1,103 (including taxes) while an award booking for the same night costs 120,000 points:
The 120,000 points needed to book a room in the current sale would cost just $600.
That’s an incredible saving of $503.
In fact, if we were to compare like for like (points bookings are fully flexible so we should compare the best flexible rate), the saving is an even more impressive $644.
Yes, I could come up with numerous examples of circumstances where someone would be foolish to buy points instead of paying with cash (because the cash rates are low) but hopefully, that goes without saying. What I’m attempting to show here is that it’s possible to get fantastic value out of this sale if you’d lie to book a high-end stay and if you put in a little bit of effort.
Hilton elites can do even better
Because multiple Hilton Honors accounts can buy points in this sale and then have those points pooled into a single account, and because Hilton Honors elites (Silver, Gold, and Diamond members) get a 5th night free when booking awards, there’s a great deal to be had here.
Right now, the famous Conrad Maldives Rangali Island continues not to offer any availability at 95,000 points per night (the best rate that we’ve seen the property offer in the past and a rate that we’re clearly never going to be seeing again), but you can still book for 120,000 points per night during every month of the year including some of the best times of the year to visit the Maldives.
What this means is that this sale can be used to book the Conrad at an incredibly good price and at peak times of the year.
Each night costs 120,000 points, but as long as you have some degree of Hilton Honors status, you can book 5 nights for the price of 4.
4 nights at 120,000 points each comes to a total of 480,000 points which at 0.5 cents per point, would cost $2,400.
As I’ve said, you would need to have multiple Hilton Honors accounts buying points and then pooling them to be able to pull together 480,000 points from this sale (or you may already have enough points in your account to make pooling unnecessary), but $2,400 for 5 nights in a Sunrise Water Villa that can, for example, cost over $9,500 for the same stay is a phenomenal deal.
Yes, you’d still have to account for the costs of getting to the Maldives and then to the Conrad (as well as the cost of food and drinks at the property), but that doesn’t make this a bad deal.
This is still incredible value at a 5* luxury property in one of the most in-demand (and expensive!) regions on earth.
If you’ve been considering a trip to the Maldives (or any other aspirational/high-end property), buying points in this sale could be a huge money saver for you.
Bottom line
As we seem to see every few weeks, Hilton’s points are on sale again from 0.5 cents each for a significant number of Hilton Honors members, so with hotel rates still running high and with top-end Hilton properties still bookable for no more than 120,000 points/night, this is yet another good opportunity to top up an account or, in some cases, to purchase points in serious numbers to save on what would otherwise be a very expensive trip.
