Update 01/29/18: A number of properties were missing due to some bad data. In addition it wasn’t clear what properties were excluded from using the free night weekend certificates at. We’ve updated the tables to make this clearer. We’ve also made similar changes to the Hyatt & IHG pages.
I imagine that a lot of people are going to have access to Hilton free night certificates with no category restrictions soon. The new American Express Hilton Aspire card comes with one free night certificate on card anniversary (and will possibly come with a free night sign up bonus) and there is the possibility to get two free night certificates with the Citi Hilton Reserve product change. In this post we will look at some of the best uses of these free night certificates. As we’ve stated in other posts in this series it’s always better to use your free night certificate than to try and save it for the perfect redemption (perfection is the enemy of good). In addition I don’t think it makes sense to plan trips around using this certificates, this hobby is all about leveraging miles and points to see and experience things YOU want to see and experience rather than trying to maximize the theoretical value of things like Hilton free night certificates.
Other posts in this series:
- Best Uses Of Your Chase Hyatt Free Night Certificate (Category 1-4)
- Best Uses Of Your Chase IHG Free Night Certificate
Contents
Best Uses Based On Cash Rates
Pointimize has graciously come through again and agreed to share their pricing data with us. They have a hotel award search tool that shows prices in cash, cash & points and award nights using points. The below values are based on real world searches their users have made, keep in mind that the more people that use the tool the better the data will become. It’s also worth noting that the data might not be 100% accurate as the free night certificates can only be used on standard rooms and Pointimize didn’t have the room type data (recording the lowest price of each property that day). This means that there will be some bias in these rankings, so please keep that in mind.
Best Conrad/Waldorf Astoria Properties
Conrad/Waldorf Astoria properties are often some of the nicest Hilton properties. Here is a list with the highest cash price for those properties.
Readers Suggestions
Whenever we do these sorts of posts, readers always have some good suggestions on what properties they have redeemed their certificates for before and why it was/wasn’t good value. I thought it would be a good idea to create a readers choice section to provide some other options. Feel free to add your own recommendations in the comments.
Conrad Bora Bora
This one was something a lot of readers were surprised wasn’t on the list. I’m not sure why it didn’t make it, I guess the average room rate is not high enough. The property itself looks beautiful and room rates are exceptionally high. The only issue with Bora Bora is getting there is expensive (and time consuming) and you’ll likely want to stay multiple nights to get any sort of value out of your trip. Things like food are also crazy expensive when you arrive.
Final Thoughts
These lists are by no means definitive, the idea is to give you some ideas at a glance. AwardTravel has also put together a nice data report on the value of Hilton points that I’d recommend reading here. I’m sure we are missing a lot of great properties, if that is the case then please let us know in the comments below so that I can add them to the readers section. Also feel free to discuss properties that are higher/lower than you expected and why that might be the case.
