Earlier this week, Hilton launched a promotion whereby customers who purchase Hilton Hhonors points will get 80% bonus points. This promotion is valid until February 8, 2016.
In this promotion Hilton is offering customers an 80% bonus on purchase of Hhonors points. Points are usually are priced at USD 10 per 1000 points. This mean that I can buy a total of 1,44,000 Hhonors points (80,000 points + 64,000 bonus) for USD 800 and that gives me a cost of approximately 0.56cents/ Hhonor point purchased.
Considering Hilton properties can come to you between 5,000 to 95,000 points, this promotion got me curios to see if we could make any good finds here, for their Indian properties. The Hilton Shillim Estate Retreat and Spa has been on my mind for a while now, even after Ajay’s bad experience there. I decided to do some number crunching across all Hilton hotels in India to understand if it was really worth buying Hilton points specifically for redemption purposes.
I selected a random weekend date in April 2016 and then compared the standard room rates to the Hhonors points required for standard room rewards redemption. Here’s what I noticed, in 13 out of 15 hotels in India if I booked via my points I would land up paying a minimum of 20% higher than the published room rate at the hotel. For simplicity, I left out the taxes. But if you are looking at Goa, you have a winner. Especially if you got yourself Diamond status last year.
Hilton’s most expensive property in India, Hilton Shillim sells in the range of INR 10,000 to 15,000 per night during most of the year, however points required for a 1 night stay here are 60,000 and even after purchasing the points with an 80% bonus, a 1 night stay at Hilton Shillim would cost us INR 22,780. This is almost paying double in monetary value via our points.
Bottomline: Clearly, the math does not work for me. I don’t value Hilton points very highly and I am not purchasing them in this promotion. However if you are inclined towards making the most of this promotion in the next 3 days then I’d suggest you first think about where you would like to redeem your points and then perform a similar calculation. Buying points may also make sense if you already have an existing balance and need to top up some points to redeem an award you have been considering. Otherwise, HHonors came up with a 100% bonus last year, and I’m sure it would come back sooner than later.
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Shipra, the promo can be used as a nice qualifying activity to avoid existing points from expiring.
That’s a good point. Gaurav
Nice analysis, Shipra! I am a HHonors Diamond member, but have never thought there’s value in purchasing HHonors points even with an 80% bonus. Your analysis justifies my belief. Thank you.
What are views on the HDFC All Miles Credit Card ? Is it worth it ?