Hilton Honors, Hilton Hotels loyalty programme, has made some small changes to the programme yesterday, which are enhancements in their own right and deserve to be talked about. Something Hilton does not want to attract attention for since they did not roll out a press release about it, but here goes anyway.
Hilton Honors points will expire 15 months out
One had to have at least one Hilton Honors eligible transaction (earn, spend, or even donate) every 12 months to keep your points from expiring earlier. This rule has quietly been modified, to make sure that you have at least 15 months before the points are lost to inactivity.
Earn on F&B/incidental spend at select-service brands
For whatever reason, earlier incidental spends at the select-service, no-frills brands such as Hampton by Hilton (the equivalent of Fairfield Inn by Marriott and Holiday Inn Express, sort of). Hilton Honors did not offer the ability to earn points on expenses such as meals charged to your room at these hotels earlier. The Tru by Hilton, Home2 Suites by Hilton, Homewood Suites by Hilton and Hampton by Hilton brands are affected by these changes.
Earn Hilton Honors points for up to four rooms per night
Hilton Honors earlier used to allow for earning for up to two rooms per night, when booked under the same name. Now, you can earn points for four rooms per night. There were workarounds for this earlier, but now, you can book your friends and families under your name, and you get the points for the rooms.
Earn more than 100,000 points per stay
In the earlier form of Hilton Honors, one had a hard stop at 100,000 base points per stay with Hilton Honors at many brands of the Hilton Hotels organisation. Although it would take a lot of time and money and perhaps an extended stay for the 100K base points cap to be reached, the good news is that the hard cap is now gone so that you can earn unlimited points for your stay as per the formula now.
Bottomline
These are enhancements in the purest form as one could imagine, with Hilton giving and not taking away from anything. I can’t imagine why Hilton is so low-key about these changes. However, with Hilton’s unpublished hotel award chart, which allows the company to take up or down the value of their hotels at any time, it still does not make them my preferred programme.
What do you make of the new changes to Hilton Honors? Anything that affects you personally?
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