Hilton just announced a major devaluation in their award chart. This is such a bummer to say the least. They will be adding three new categories (8, 9 and 10) and there will also be peak pricing for certain times of the year, which is kind of deceiving and bogus because almost the whole year will be peak pricing for the high end hotels/resorts. The man is sticking it to us again. The only good news is that none of this takes affect until March 28, 2013 so anything you book prior to then will be from the old award chart. You can even make bookings up to a year away at the old award values.
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| Conrad Koh Samui. Image from conradhotels3.hilton.com |
I have over 150,000 Hilton points right now and was waiting to use them for an AXON award** at a high end category 7 property such as in the Maldives, Thailand or Bora Bora. I will now have to try to book a four night stay within the next few days to secure the old award chart prices. Hopefully they'll have the availability that I want/need.
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| Hilton Bora Bora. Image from noobtravler.com |
There are many, many people that are blogging about this and none of them are happy at all about this change. Some even are talking about never staying in a Hilton hotel again. This move by Hilton really isn't making loyalty to the brand easy at all.
Here is the new award chart effective March 28:
And here is the old award chart:
| Hotel category |
HHonors Points required for 1 free night |
| 1 |
7,500 |
| 2 |
12,500 |
| 3 |
25,000 |
| 4 |
30,000 |
| 5 |
35,000 |
| 6 |
40,000 |
| 7 |
50,000 |
| Waldorf Astoria™ Hotels & Resorts |
50,000–80,000 |
If you have a stash of Hilton points right now, I highly recommend that you burn them suckers at once! No sense at all holding on to them. I plan to try to book my award to one of these places in the photos very soon. I just hope my wife will approve. ;)
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| Hilton Maldives Iru Fushi. Image from tripadvisor.com |
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| Conrad Maldives. Image from epykomene.com |
** An AXON award is getting a top category hotel for less points because you have a Hilton branded American Express credit card. Having this card opens the door to amazing deals using points. On the old award chart a stay at a category 7 would cost 50,000 points per night, or 200,000 for four nights without the Amex card. But with the Amex card the same hotel would only cost 145,000 points, or 36,000 points per night. A very good use of points for luxury accommodations. There is also a thing called a GLON award, but we'll talk about that on a later post.
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