Hilton Honors Guide – Part 2: How to make best use of your Honors points.

On this Monday, we continue with our guide on Hilton Honors.

• Hilton Honors Guide – Part 1: Hilton Honors Gold status, why it is worth it and how to easily become Gold
• Hilton Honors Guide – Part 2: How to make best use of your Honors points.

Today we will show you how to make best use of your points, even if you do not visit fancy places all the time.

Hotel Categories

Hilton Honors divides their hotels in 10 different categories. For category 1, you only need to redeem 5000 points for one night in a standard room. A category 10 hotel will cost you 95000 points for a standard room. Sometimes standard rooms might even cost you less in terms of points, but you never have to pay more than defined by the category.

Usually, it only makes sense to use your points for the standard rooms, because all others rooms tend to be significantly higher in terms of points you have to spent.

We will only give you a small example of some hotels on the lower and higher end of the category spectrum.

Sweet Spots, category 1-2 hotels

Considering category 1 hotels, you only need to redeem 5000 points for one night which basically always gives you a good value for your points. The same can be said for category 2 hotels where you need to use 10000 points per night. Examples here for those categories are:

• Hilton Garden Inn Bali Ngurah Rai Airport in Indonesia  for 5000 points per night, a wonderful airport hotel to explore Bali.
• The Hilton Garden Inn Vienna South for 10000 points per night. It is often priced well over 200€.

Both of them represent an astonishing value in terms of points, and if you ever consider visiting one of those cities, go for the points redemption here.

Sweet spots in the upper end of the categories.

On the upper end of the spectrum you find a lot of hotels in fancy places. The Conrad Maldives is maybe the hotel where you could save the most amount of money when booking a room(villa) with your points as rates here are over 900€ per night on a regular basis. The problem however is that most of us will not visit the Maldives anytime soon and everything at this hotel is very expensive from drinks to meals over the flight taking you there from Male’s airport.

So lets simply focus on hotels you would book on a regular basis.

How you can maximize the value of your points for an every-day hotel

We suggest when you plan a trip to a specific location, just check if redemptions at Hilton hotels there will give you a good value to use your points and if those hotels suit your needs. You should try to get at least 0.5 cents per point used, so 0.5€ per 100 points spent. This perhaps is not the best available redemption out there, but you will not lose too much value keeping these numbers in mind and most important, you will find ways to redeem your points on a more regular basis. What are thousands of points worth if you never redeem them. To make it easier, you should get the following value when redeeming your points for a hotel room:

• 1€ for every 200 points
• 10€ for every 2000 points
• 50€ for every 10000 points
• 100€ for every 20000 points

For us, it makes most sense to use the points when you are planning to visit a city and on a specific date and check the value you will get for your points. If the prices are higher than usual on your date, for example if an event is taking place in that city, you might already have found a good redemption possibility. This will allow a normal traveller to get at least a decent value out of his points.

Of course it is nice to get the most possible value out of your points, but if you find a redemption in a city that suits you, just use your points, as points sitting in your account forever don’t give you any value either.

Let’s have a look at an example for a night in Berlin on the 31st of December (You can always switch between points and money in the upper right corner of the booking page):

Here we have a great example on how you can redeem your points and receive a decent value for them, but also for the opposite case:

On the Hilton Berlin, Hampton Berlin City West and especially on the Waldorf Astoria (70000 points compared to 630€), you will get way over the recommended 0.5cent per point.

On the other hand, the Hampton City Centre Alexanderplatz will give you less than the suggested value in terms of money per point

5th night for free

As a Silver, Gold or Diamond member, when booking a stay with 5 nights using points the 5th night is free cutting the points you need by 5. This is something you have to keep in mind and can even further increase the value you will get for your points.

Check out the first part of the tutorial to see how you can become Gold relatively easy.

Part pay with points

Hilton offers you the possibility to part pay the rate with points. Here the same in terms of value counts as before. Even if you do not have enough points to cover the full room charge, or your points are expiring soon, it is certainly not a mistake to use this function.

Conclusion

For a normal traveller, it is hard to redeem the points on fancy hotels far away. To get some value out of you points, just stick to our 0.5 cent per point rule, and you will not lose too much value with your points and you will still be able to redeem your points on a regular basis.