Hilton hotels is running a point purchase promotion where Hilton Honors members can earn 80% bonus on points purchased through March 16, 2018.  The promotion is even better for members in the US who have the Hilton American Express Card. Cardholders can earn a 100% bonus on purchases with no minimum purchase requirement.

Buying just 1,000 points will kick in the full 80% bonus. and you can buy a maximum of 80,000 Hilton Honors points. Hilton Honors points are usually priced at USD 10 per 1,000 points. This means that you can buy a total of 144,000 Honors points (80,000 points + 64,000 bonus) for USD 800 bringing down the cost of each point bought to approximately 0.56 US cents/HHonors point. Here is the link to this promotion where you can buy the points.

Hilton was running a similar promotion last year, where buying a minimum of 10k points would kick in the 80% bonus. In those terms, this is a better offer.  I had already done an analysis of Hilton hotels in India to see if it is really worth buying Hilton points specifically for redemption purposes.

 

Although purchasing points under this offer do make sense for some Hilton properties like the Conrad Maldives where the cost for a reward night in December works out to USD 532 versus the retail average rate of USD 1100 upwards.

The math may also work if you are considering longer stays, where for every 5 nights stay you get the 5th night free, so the costs go further down. Additionally, you can also use a combination of Points & Money for award stays, where you can redeem part points and pay part cash for any hotel redemption.

Remember, Hilton now allows you to pool points from various accounts at no extra cost, so you could actually buy in different accounts if you are hit with the 80000 points limit per annum.

Bottomline

If you are thinking about purchasing points under this promotion then I’d suggest you first think about where you would like to redeem your points and work out the numbers. Buying points may make sense if you already have an existing balance and need to top up some points to redeem an award you have been considering.

Are you buying Hilton Honors points in this promotion?