Hilton Offering Points With A Discount Of Up To 50% (0.5 Cents/Point)

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Hilton is offering to sell you HHonors points at a discount but you won’t know what that discount is until you log in to your Hilton HHonors account. The offer runs through 16 September 2016 and, from what I’ve seen, sees the discount capped at 50%.

For what it’s worth I was targeted for a 40% discount on any points purchase and I’m probably going to pass.

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Buy Hilton HHonors Points – The Rules

Here are the important bits from the T&Cs which you’ll find in full at the bottom of the “purchase points” page after you log in:

  • Offer runs to 11:59pm ET on 16 September 2016
  • Maximum purchase in this promotion – 80,000 points
  • Maximum purchase in a calendar year – 80,000 points
  • Transactions are handled by Points.com so there is no option for earning credit card category bonuses for hotel/travel spend.

The Math

The math on this promotion couldn’t be simpler because there’s no tiering or structure to the promotion and, unlike a lot of previous promotions, there’s no benefit to buying a lot of points – the HHonors points cost the same (per point) if you buy 1,000 or the full 80,000 allowance.

Hilton sells HHonors points, outside of its promotions, at 1.0 cent each (as I really hope no one pays that for them) so depending on what discount you were targeted for this is what you’ll be paying per point:

  • 30% – 0.70 cents/point
  • 35% – 0.65 cents/point
  • 40% – 0.60 cents/point
  • 50% – 0.5 cents/point

If you wanted to buy the full 80,000 points and you were given the 50% discount they would cost you $400.

Should You Buy Hilton Points At 0.5 Cents Each?

I’m passing on my offer of a 40% discount (0.60 cents/point) because Hilton has offered points at a cheaper rate at least three times this year…..

….and it’s selling them to some customers at 0.5 cents each right now so why would I pay 0.6 cents a point unless I had a very urgent need for more HHonors points?

But if you were lucky enough to be targeted for the 50% discount then that is another matter.

At 0.5 cents this is definitely the cheapest we’ve seen Hilton offer points this year and probably the cheapest they’ve ever been sold…so that makes this offer very interesting.

A major annoyance is that Hilton won’t let customers buy more than 80,000 points and, if you take a look at the Hilton award chart below……

Buy Hilton HHonors Points

….you’ll see that the very top hotels can cost more than that.

Still, that doesn’t mean that you can’t get value.

You can get a little bit of value when certain properties are just plain expensive….like the New York Hilton Midtown on this randomly selected Saturday in September:

hilton-hhonors-booking-ny-midtownThe cheapest option is $396 before tax and, when you add the tax in, that comes to $459:

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You can purchase the 80,000 for the night for $400 in this promotion and, although you won’t be earning points on your stay, you’ll save $59 – a pretty good deal if you have to be in NYC that weekend and don’t much care about earning more HHonors points.

The deals can get better.

If you wanted a bit of Californian sunshine in San Diego you could do worse than staying in the Gaslamp District. A random night I selected costs 50,000 points or $280 + tax.

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Once you add in the tax, the cash price rises to $320….

Screen Shot 2016-08-18 at 17.50.26

….but you can purchase 50,000 points for just $250 – and that’s a $70 saving on just one night.

There are other ways this promotion can help you can save too:

If you have Hilton elite status and already have a stack of HHonors points it’s worth remembering that Hilton offers the 5th night free on award bookings.

If you only have enough points for 3 nights then it would almost certainly be worth buying enough points for a 4th  night just to get a fifth night for nothing.

Bottom Line

If you didn’t get targeted for the 50% discount then I can’t see this being a good promotion for you unless you just need a few thousand points to top up your account to get an award you’ve been looking to book.

If you were lucky enough to get the 50% discount offer then there’s definitely value to be had here. As always, the most important thing is to have a plan for the points before you buy them (stockpiling points is a terrible idea in an industry that loves a good devaluation).

If you have an idea what you’d like to use the points for then do the math, make sure it makes sense and only then buy what you need. Remember, this isn’t a one time offer from Hilton…there will always be another promotion.