American Express has announced that starting July 18th, the American Express Hilton Ascend card will become known as the American Express Hilton Surpass card. This was the name of the Surpass card before they changed it to Ascend. In addition on August 1st, 2019 changes will be made to the $250 resort credit. This resort credit will no longer be usable when booking an advance purchase rate (official statement below).
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On August 1, Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Members can continue to use their $250 Resort Statement Credit benefit for purchases made with participating resort properties for all rates, except when booking an Advanced Purchase rate.
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All other Hilton rates remain eligible for the $250 Resort Credit benefit for purchases made with participating resort properties.
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Our Thoughts
Having two cards named Ascend & Aspire before was a mistake, even though I blog about credit cards constantly I still often got them confused. American Express obviously realizes that was a mistake in hindsight. American Express are claiming that the advance purchase rate change will only affect a very small number of customers, but in my experiences those rates are almost always the cheapest so this will devalue that benefit significantly. If American Express/Hilton are not properly compensating properties for that resort credit then I’d expect to see the differences between those rates actually increase as well.
