Last month, Citibank sent out an announcement to their customers about the relationship ending between Hilton Citi. You see, Hilton Honors decided to go exclusively with American Express in the USA for a co-brand card, and hence, they pulled the plug on a partnership with Hilton Honors across the world. We had written about this about a month ago.

Hilton Rangali Island Maldives is 95K Honors points

The communication sent to customers is reproduced below:

Effective 7th December 2017, our global partnership with Hilton Hotels & Resorts will be discontinued, and you will no longer be able to transfer your reward points to your Hilton HHonors account. In case you wish to convert your existing reward points into Hilton HHonors Bonus Points, please contact us before 7th December 2017.

So, if you’d like to still move some points, today and tomorrow seem to be the last days to do so. It is simple and straightforward, hence. If you have any stays you’d like to plan with Hilton Honors points and are banking on transferring from your Citibank points accounts, do it now.

I got a query from a reader about what to do given he won’t be planning a vacation for a year or so now, and he does not like to spend miles for premium flights, but more for hotel experiences. Hence Honors was one of his best friends. Here is his query.

Hi Ajay, need your advice. Have Citi prestige ~1L points. The citi guys have broken away with Hilton so my gold membership and 1×6 conversation is going to stop this month. Only other worthwhile Hospitality partner was Taj, but that too they have changed to Silver membership from gold and cut down on bonus vouchers. So i was hoping to Citi get on board with new hospitality partner. But got no hint yet which it is going to be.

My question is, shall i convert to 6L hilton points now while it is still allowed. As originally planned to use citi points on hilton vacations to maldives/koh samui etc. in Dec18 OR Keep points with citi. But option currently are limited as I never planned on using it for miles on airlines As economy never made any sense with redemptions And business/first is more of experience than necessity for me. But staying on great property is kinda a necessity as i will pay for it anyways.

My advice to him specifically was, and could apply in your case too:

Like you say you’d like to be using them on hotels, then Hilton is indeed one of your major partners going away. Perhaps a good idea to transfer, but first see where you want to go and transfer accordingly. Or, keep 1/2 with Citi and 1/2 over to Honors.

In this case, I was asking him to hedge his bets by keeping some points in Honors since he’d anyways use them next year, but not move the entire stash, given he has a boatload of points.

Citi Prestige transfers to Hilton at 1 Citi Point = 6 Honors points, and Citi PremierMiles transfers as 1 PM = 1.5 Honors Points.

In case you are looking for destinations to go with your Hilton Honors points, the Conrad Rangali Islands Maldives is a good contender close to India.

Bottomline

I have a 100K Honors points sitting in my account and I’ve lost status with Hilton. Next year I’d be focussing on travelling with Starwood/Marriott and old pal Hyatt. So I don’t expect to transfer more points to Honors at the moment. But if there are some good resorts you suggest I visit with Hilton, I’m game to change my mind. If you do have Hilton plans, act fast and don’t miss this deadline.

What are you planning to do with your Citibank Points now that Hilton will be parting ways? Do share.

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