The newish Hilton Honors (with one “H”) did a staggered refresh, starting last month. One of the things to hit was the changing of how awards are structured, becoming more of a revenue-based redemption model with caps. Hilton also allowed the mixing of money and points to make up the cost of a room. This can be helpful, in certain circumstances, but there is something to keep an eye on when you make a reservation!
One Thing To Be Careful of with the New Hilton Honors
Overview of the New Hilton Honors Award Structure.
The new Hilton Honors slider for redemptions
With the new award structure, it can be a big cost saver, depending on where your reservations lie. Depending on the point value (since Hilton does not use categories anymore) of the hotel you are making a reservation at, you could get a great value if the cash cost is huge – thanks to the cap on points. There still are categories it is just that Hilton does not advertise them anymore (and it means they can change them whenever). So, if the cap is 40,000 points, it will not go higher than that even if the property is going for $600 per night.
What To Watch For – Change in Pricing
This property was 28,000 points just a week ago!
On the flip side, if the property is only costing $120 per night, you may only need to use 23,000 points – instead of the 40,000 points. So, what do you need to be careful of? With this new system, your award price could fluctuate quite a bit depending on the pricing for the hotel.
Price Goes Down – Points Can Drop
For instance, there was one hotel I was watching that was at the cap of 40,000 points per night. But, because the cash price dropped, the point cost dropped as well. In fact, it dropped in half! So, I was able to save 20,000 points as a result of the fluctuating price of a hotel, under this new Hilton Honors award system.
Of course, the opposite could be true as well. If you see a property at a low price, it is definitely better to lock in the award quickly since it may go up at any time. With generous cancellation polices for most hotel bookings with awards, it always will pay to book now and keep checking later to see if the price drops.
Takeaway
It is an interesting thing to deal with this on hotels. Of course, we are used to doing this with Southwest, but now you could end up saving some points (or even money) if you check your Hilton hotel reservations much more closely for price fluctuations.
We did have this a little before with Hilton because the suite award pricing would be tied to the price, but this time, it is the regular rooms as well and you can mix the cash in with it as well if you want to pay a little and save more points.
Have you seen any of your Hilton hotels change in point price since booking (not your reservation)?
There’s cap on points? I’m seeing a Some more than double their maximum. 128000 points for Conrad Manila for example. I even saw Hilton San Diego bay front for over 400,0000.
For standard rooms. As before, the premium rooms are tied to cost as well and there are no caps for those!
There’s caps on standard rooms, at least for now. I’m guessing those were “premium” rooms, which have always been somewhat relative to the price.
I found I was able to save some points based on the new awards model. I had originally booked 3 nights at 50,000 points per night, but checked back after the change in the awards nights policy and found the same room for 37,000 points per night. I cancelled my original reservation and rebooked at the lower rate. I was very pleased in this situation. We will see what happens next time.
This is great! I always check and recheck SW flights! Since the change for Honors, I have found standard rooms to be very affordable compared to before the change! At least for where and when I have looked.
I will have to start checking and rechecking my Hilton reservations!