Devaluation: Hilton Honors Now Charges Up To 200K Points Per Night

Hilton Honors seems to have just increased award costs for stays at some of its top properties. I can’t say that I’m that surprised, but this sure is unfortunate.

Hilton Honors raises points cap for top properties

For several years now, Hilton Honors hasn’t published award charts. While the program has dynamic award pricing, the reality is that the most expensive award rates at a particular hotel have been pretty consistent. That’s to say that if a standard room is available, you can redeem points for it at a cost that’s not above some maximum.

Up until now, Hilton Honors free night redemptions for standard rooms have topped out at 150,000 points per night, but that’s no longer the case. It seems that standard room free night redemptions now top out at 200,000 points per night.

For example, you’ll find that the Waldorf Astoria Maldives now charges up to 200,000 points per night…

…while the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal now charges up to 190,000 points per night.

As before, Hilton Honors elite members can receive a fifth night free on award redemptions, meaning that a property costing up to 200,000 points per night could cost as little as 160,000 points per night.

This is an unfortunate Hilton Honors change

Of course nobody is happy to see their points be worth less, so these changes aren’t good for anyone. However, if there’s any silver lining, at least as of now, it looks like not that many properties are priced at over 150,000 points per night, so this seems to be for a limited number of properties. Still, it’s never fun to see the cap on redemptions increased in this way.

Personally I value Hilton Honors points at 0.5 cents each, so that means a property costing 200,000 points per night is the equivalent of spending $1,000 per night for a hotel. With a fifth night free, that could be as low as $800 per night.

Of course I don’t like to see this, but in terms of the cap on redemption costs and my valuation of points, this puts Hilton Honors more in line with IHG One Rewards, Marriott Bonvoy, and World of Hyatt.

If anything, my bigger frustration with Hilton Honors continues to be the limited number of standard rooms that are available for redemptions at so many of the top properties. I find that situation to be much worse than with Marriott Bonvoy, for example.

Bottom line

Hilton Honors is now charging up to 200,000 points for free night redemptions in standard rooms, compared to the previous cap of up to 150,000 points per night. As of now, only a very limited number of properties seem to be impacted by this. Of course the issue is that once some properties charge that much, it makes it easy for other properties to similarly be repriced.

What do you make of these Hilton Honors changes?