Buy Hilton Honors Points with a 100% Bonus

Buying Hilton Honors points during one of the frequent 100% bonus events can be a very effective way to instantly top up your account balance for a big redemption.

Hilton typically offers this bonus throughout the year, and this time, you’ll have until May 14, 2024 to buy points at the bonus rate.

Let’s have a look at how the promotion works, and under what circumstances you might wish to take advantage of it.

Buy Hilton Honors Points with a 100% Bonus

Hilton Honors normally allows you to purchase points at a rate of 1 cent per point (USD), which is much higher than a fair price at which I’d consider purchasing points.

Indeed, we generally value Hilton Honors points at 0.7 cents per point (CAD) or 0.5 cents per point (USD), so it would seldom make sense to buy points at the usual rate of 1 cent per point (USD).

During these 100% bonus events, you’ll get double the points, meaning that you’re effectively purchasing points at half price for 0.5 cents per point (USD). That’s much closer to a fair price at which buying points might make sense.

How many Hilton Honors points can you buy?

Hilton normally caps the number of points each member can buy at 80,000 base points per year, plus bonus points. With this promotion, that limit has been doubled, so the most you can buy, in total between base and bonus points, is 320,000 points.

Be sure to log into your Hilton Honors account to see the exact structure of your offer. Other accounts have offers for smaller bonuses, but the highest bonus you can receive appears to be 100%.

Keep in mind that Hilton allows you to easily pool points among different individuals’ accounts, so it’s easy to bypass the limit by purchasing the maximum number of points under different family members’ accounts and then pooling them all together.

Which credit card should you use to buy Hilton Honors points?

You’ll want to use a US credit card to buy Hilton Honors points, if possible. That’s because Canadian residents are subject to local taxes on points purchases, which can add a further 5–15% to your total.

Combined with the 2.5% foreign exchange fee on most Canadian credit cards, these avoidable costs can quickly eat into the value of your purchase.

Hilton Honors points purchases are processed by an external vendor, Points.com. They don’t count as a hotel purchase, so there’s no advantage to using one of the Amex US Hilton credit cards for your purchase.

I’d recommend simply using the US credit card of your choice with a high return on daily spending, or one on which you’re working on meeting the minimum spending requirement.

Who Should Buy Hilton Points with a 100% Bonus?

You’ll come out ahead as long as you can redeem the points at a value higher than 0.5 US cents per point – which you should definitely be aiming for whenever you’re considering a Hilton redemption anyway. 

For example, if you maxed out the current promotion, you’d end up acquiring 320,000 Hilton Honors points for a price of $1,600 (USD). You’d then look to redeem for a hotel stay that retails for far more than that amount. 

Because of the significant upfront expense involved, you should rarely buy points without a specific and immediate use in mind. Instead, I’d say that buying Hilton points only makes sense for one of the following purposes:

Booking a High-Value Aspirational Hotel

If you’re looking to honeymoon in the Maldives or Bora Bora, you’ll no doubt have considered staying at the many glamorous properties such as the Conrad Maldives, Conrad Bora Bora Nui, or the Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi.

Hilton Honors doesn’t publish an award chart, but most of their top-tier properties go for at most 120,000 points per night for a standard room – with the exception of the Waldorf Astoria hotels in the Maldives or Los Cabos, which can go for up to 150,000 points per night.

Compared to the cash rates of $2,000+ (USD) per night (plus taxes) at these properties, redeeming points is obviously a great deal.

At places like this, you’d also likely want to squeeze maximum value out of your points by taking advantage of the Fifth Night Free benefit, which would bring the effective price down to 96,000 points per night for most of Hilton’s top hotels (or 120,000 points per night at the top-tier Waldorf Astorias).

And if you were to buy these points under the current 100% bonus promotion, that’d be equivalent to paying $480 (USD) per night at the Conrads (or $600 (USD) per night at the Waldorf), which is akin to getting 80% off the retail price.

The trickiest part may lie in finding the hotly contested standard room availability at these resorts, especially if you’re looking to take advantage of the Fifth Night Free benefit.

If a standard room isn’t available, then the Hilton Honors website will give you the option of redeeming a ridiculously high number of points for a premium room or suite, and those are usually never a great deal.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find even a single night at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives, let alone a block of five consecutive nights, with standard room availability over the coming year.

If you’re looking to use the Fifth Night Free benefit, your best bet is to keep a close eye on room availability at the very end of the schedule and aim to snag as many nights as possible at the base rate immediately when space opens up.

Indeed, Ricky secured five nights in a row, so it’s very much possible if you check diligently (note that the reservation was made back when the property only cost 120,000 points per night). 

Meanwhile, it’s much easier to find a block of five consecutive nights at the standard rate of 120,000 points at the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island, in comparison.

If you’re buying points with the aim of staying at one of these aspirational hotels, I’d recommend first locating the available standard rooms on your desired dates, and then quickly completing the transaction and securing the rooms at the highly discounted rate.

Quickly Top Up for an Upcoming Redemption

If you’ve identified a good opportunity to redeem your Hilton Honors points for greater than our target valuation of 0.7 cents (CAD) / 0.5 cents (USD) per point, but are still missing some of the points required to complete the booking, then buying points with a 100% bonus to top up your account could be the most straightforward solution.

(This applies to the above-mentioned luxury properties as well. Many Canadians who’ve gotten one or two of the Amex US Hilton Honors cards will have points balances in the range of 200,000+ Hilton Honors points. Buying points to top up to the 300,000- or 400,000-point range will allow you to secure that memorable getaway at a high-end resort much faster than waiting a month or two to earn yet another credit card signup bonus.)

While Hilton’s luxury properties probably offer the most stellar value, there are occasionally pockets of value in redeeming points for lower-end hotels or nice hotels in less popular destinations as well, although they don’t appear all too often.

You’ve Exhausted All the Amex US Hilton Honors Signup Bonuses

The Amex US Hilton cards offer very attractive signup bonuses, but you can only earn the bonus on each card once.

After you’ve exhausted those opportunities (including any upgrade offers that might come around on the lower-end Hilton cards), then purchasing points outright from the program during one of these 100% bonus events will probably be the best way to rack up Hilton points quickly.

Looking at the rough numbers, the signup bonuses on the Amex US Hilton cards alone should be enough to get you one or two amazing getaways at one of the top-tier properties within the chain (double that if you’re going for the US cards in two-player mode).

After that, if you’d still like to try out more Hilton, Conrad, and Waldorf properties at a fraction of the price, then buying points strategically will likely be your best bet.

If you’ve run out of other ways to get Hilton points, these promotional sales are the easiest way to reach your aspirations for more stays at high-end resorts.

Other Ways to Earn Hilton Honors Points

If you aren’t in a rush to acquire Hilton Honors points but would like to build them up slowly towards a big redemption in the future, you’ll want to consider getting the Amex US Hilton credit cards for their attractive signup bonuses (and in the case of the Aspire Card, the incredibly lucrative benefits as well).

That’s particularly the case at times when the Amex US Hilton cards are offering good bonuses, with elevated signup points and Free Night Rewards:

• The Hilton Honors Card offers up to 100,000 Hilton Honors points upon spending $2,000 (USD) in the first six months.
  • This is a very attractive option for your first Amex US card, since it’s a no-fee card that you can keep forever to build your US credit history.
• The Hilton Honors Surpass Card offers up to 155,000 Hilton Honors points upon spending $3,000 (USD) in the first six months.
  • If you prefer to keep up-front fees down, this card is a good choice, with a better cost-to-points ratio than the Aspire Card.
• The Hilton Honors Aspire Card offers 175,000 Hilton Honors points upon spending $6,000 (USD) in the first three months.
  • The $600 (USD) in total credits on this card help to offset the $550 (USD) annual fee; on top of that, you also get an annual Free Night Reward and instant Hilton Diamond status, so this is very much an excellent card to apply for and keep forever.
• The Hilton Honors Business Card offers up to 175,000 Hilton Honors points upon spending $8,000 (USD) in the first six months.
  • As a business credit card, this card doesn’t count against the Chase “5/24 Rule” as you plan your long-term US credit card strategy.

Besides credit card bonuses, another meaningful way to rack up Hilton Honors points is by maximizing promotions on paid stays, which are often more generous than the promotions put on by other hotel chains.

Ricky used this strategy during a trip to New Zealand. While he could’ve redeemed points to stay at the Hilton Queenstown and the Chateau on the Park Christchurch at a half-decent value, he chose to pay cash instead and rack up points aggressively.

Overall, I think it’s wise to gear your Hilton strategy towards larger aspirational redemptions with a long-term outlook, such as a fancy Conrad or Waldorf Astoria resort stay, where the value is much more apparent compared to the cash price.

In pursuit of this goal, I’m happy to accumulate Hilton points gradually, via a mix of the Amex US signup bonuses, maximizing promotions on paid stays, and capitalizing on these bonus events on points purchases if I need to top up my account when the time comes to book.

Previous Promotions

As you decide whether this promotion is a good opportunity for you to meet your travel goals, here’s a look back at Hilton’s past bonuses on purchasing points:

Conclusion

Hilton Honors’s latest 100% bonus on buying points will last until May 14, 2024. Make sure to take advantage before then if you’d like to get closer to a hugely discounted stay at one of Hilton’s top properties, or if you need an instant top-up for an upcoming points redemption.

You can click here to log in to your Hilton Honors account and buy up to 320,000 Hilton Honors points at a rate of 0.5 cents per point (USD).

Meanwhile, if a high-end Hilton redemption is a more distant goal for you, then you can focus on the Amex US Hilton credit card bonuses to rack up the points without having to buy them.

Fortunately, these bonus events usually come around a few times every year, in case you have a need to buy points in the future.

The post Buy Hilton Honors Points with a 100% Bonus appeared first on Prince of Travel by Josh Greenberg.