American Express has finally caught up with the Hilton re-brand: they’ve changed the name of their Hilton cards and upped the standard offers.
The Offer
Head to the American Express website, or use these direct links: Hilton Honors, Hilton Honors Surpass. (thanks to reader DDG for reminding me about these links!). Help a reader out by using a referral link instead.
- Hilton Honors card: Earn 80,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $2,000 within 3 months of account opening.
- Hilton Honors Surpass card: Earn 100,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $3,000 within 3 months of account opening, PLUS earn a free weekend night award after your first anniversary of card membership.
- Both of these offers can be generated by referral as well. The Hilton Honors card gives 20,000 points per referral, up to 80,000 per year. The Hilton Honors Surpass card gives 25,000 points per referral, up to 80,000 per year.
Upgrade Offers
A lot of people have been able to upgrade to the Surpass card and get a 100,000 point bonus as well. We discuss this in more depth here.
Generating Referrals
As a reminder, please do not share referrals in the comments. You can share and use each other’s links here.
Matching
As a general rule (with very limited exceptions mostly applying to the SPG cards), American Express does not match offers. However, reader T was able to get 3,000 courtesy points, having recently signed up for the 75,000 points offer. I doubt that American Express will match the weekend free night on the Surpass card, but it can’t hurt to try for some courtesy points on the Hilton Honors card if you recently signed up.
Our Verdict
These bonuses compete with the recent increased referral offers…but there’s a catch for each offer.
The catch for the Hilton Honors card is that the 80,000 bonus points requires $2,000 in spend instead of $1,000 in spend, and you only get an extra 5,000 points. That extra $1,000 in spend is $20 on a 2% card, which isn’t that much less than an extra 8,000 Hilton points (including 3,000 from unbonused spend), even before the recent program changes. And if you really wanted 5,000 more points, $1,000 in spend at a grocery store on this card gives you exactly 5,000 points. Let’s just say I’m not impressed, even if it is technically the highest public offer ever. (Basically, I would stick with the 75,000 bonus points for $1,000 spend offer unless you would put $2,000 on this card anyway. You can use that extra $1,000 in spend for more lucrative signup offers.)
The catch for the Hilton Honors Surpass card is that the free weekend night requires you to keep the card for year 2 and pay the $75 annual fee again. In my opinion, you should easily be able to redeem a free weekend night certificate for much more than $75. This offer is awesome and I’d go for it in a heart beat if I didn’t already have a Surpass.
If you have any questions or comments, please drop them below! If you’re interested in other recent offers on these cards, you can head over to our post “A Spreadsheet of Current & Recent Credit Card Signup Bonuses for Major Issuers”.
As always, we recommend reading through these things everybody should know about American Express credit cards before applying for this card or asking basic questions.
h/t u/ha_ka on r/churning
Tempting, but I’m not sure if the extra 1 weekend night is worth it to me now. To maximize the value of it, you’d have to go to a high end property, which I wouldn’t want to pay for a second night with points or cash. And I almost never stay at a city for only 1 night so that means switching hotels right after which would be a big pain.
Just got approved, thanks DOC! Is it possible to generate a referral link immediately after getting approved or do you have to wait until the card arrives?
Bit the bullet and applied. Got approved instantly and it asked me if I wanted to see my card details. I clicked yes so I could add it to Apple Pay but something went wrong and it went to a blank page. But at least I’m approved. That’s 5 regular cards so that beats the 4 limit you have posted on your Amex facts page.
I am new to hotel bonuses but have done around 30 or so airline and other travel cc bonuses. How does the free night after first year of card membership work and cost? Is it you pay the $75 when opening card, then $75 again to access free night? So $150 basically for 1 free night only plus the 100k points is the bonus for the surpass? Any idea on how long the spg offers are going to be around, I just signed up for spg personal but want to get a spg biz before they disappear.
i clicked the upgrade link. and it doesnt show 100Kbonus words on it. I dont know what is going on? Can i use that link?
Just kinda curious actually, is there any chance that the rebranding of the card from HHonors to Honors actually counts as a new product in Amex’s system. You would think not, but I don’t know what kind of criteria they use to determine if you’ve had the card and received the bonus before. Could be at least possible that a name change of the card actually leads to the creation of a new “product”…
Just wanna ping back and say that I did receive the 100k hilton points after meeting the $3k spend. I used the upgrade link with the restrictive language (prior to the no restrictive language link coming out). I also had already received the signup bonus for the surpass card. So it seems at least in my case, the restrictive language on the upgrade offer was not enforced.
I have a question about the amount of referral bonus you can get per year. The terms say you can get 80,000 points per year. Is it per individual or per card (i.e. if you have both the no AF card and the surpass the max would then be 160,000)?
It is per card, so you can get up to 80,000 per year on both for a total of 160,000.
That’s awesome! Thanks for the clarification.
I upgraded my wife’s card using the link, but now that we’ve chatted with Amex, they don’t show any bonus code. The upgrade seemed to go through, and no language about previously having had the card (which she did). Not sure where to go from here. If nothing good happens, I guess we’ll just undo the upgrade, we apparently have another couple weeks.
Did you check again? Amex CS usually asks to check after 48 hrs to see if bonus is tagged to your account or not. thanks !
This time they found it! Cool. As an aside, did you know that chatting with Amex you want to start the chat session from the card you’re asking about? You can be looking at another card once you’re chatting, but it apparently facilitates them finding the relevant card (assuming you’ve got 10 on your acct) if you are looking at it when you chat.
I’m new to this and can’t understand why 100,000 HH points is anything fantastic. When I look at the redemption values for HH points for hotels in my area (I live in Central Florida), they all want around a hundred thousand points for a single night at the beach in the summer. I don’t see the value unless you regularly travel & stay at Hilton brands anyway
Hilton points aren’t extremely valuable, it’s just that this is as good as this offer got.