Hilton has announced that they will be making some significant changes starting in April of 2018. This is on the back of the changes they made in 2017 where there was four positive changes and one big negative change plus the ability to restore points that was made in late 2017. This was also announced ahead of the new American Express Hilton credit cards being launched.
Contents
Changes To Earning
- You will earn 10 points per $1 spent (5 at Home2 Suites by Hilton and Tru by Hilton). Elite tier bonuses will increase at the following rates:
- Silver: 20% (previously 15%)
- Gold: 80% (previously 25%)
- Diamond: 100% (previously 50%)
- You will no longer be able to select a My Way Earning style. Previously you could either choose points & points (10 base points plus an additional 5 bonus points per $1 spent or Points & Miles where you’d earn 10 base points plus an additional 1 mile per $1 spent).
Here is the points earning differences:
| Old | New | |
|---|---|---|
| Blue | 15 | 10 |
| Silver | 16.5 | 12 |
| Gold | 17.5 | 18 |
| Diamond | 20 | 20 |
As you can see, only gold members are better off under the new program and they only receive an extra 0.5 points per $1 spent. Hilton’s marketing team have done an absolutely amazing job in convincing other blogs that this is an improvement over the old system. Hilton members are also losing the opportunity to earn miles instead of points. Hilton claim that less than 1% of members were using this option, but in my opinion less choice is always a bad thing. Overall these changes are bad but most likely won’t affect most readers as they’ll have some form of status from a credit card.
Milestone Bonuses
- Once you’ve stayed 40 nights in a calendar year you’ll receive an extra 10,000 bonus points for every ten nights you stay.
- On your 60th night per year you’ll receive an additional 30,000 bonus points.
It looks like the first bonus triggers on your 40th night, as once you’ve stayed 60 nights you’ll have received a total of 60,000 bonus points. Obviously this can only really be seen as a positive, I think Diamond members will actually see a reduction in the usefulness of their status once the American Express Hilton Aspire launches as that gifts the cardholder Diamond status. That being said for people reaching Diamond status from 60 nights an extra 60,000 points is nothing to sneeze at.
Elite Rollover Nights
- Nights that are earned beyond the current elite tier requirements can be rolled over to count towards elite tier status for the following year.
Hilton currently has the following requirements for status:
- Silver: 10 nights
- Gold: 40 nights
- Diamond: 60 nights
Let’s say you stay 30 nights, you haven’t stayed enough to earn gold status but under the new program you’d be able to roll over these 20 nights to status for the new year. Unfortunately you can’t use this with status given by a credit card (e.g if I had Diamond from the Aspire and stayed 30 nights I couldn’t roll them over to the following year. It’s also unclear if I would be allowed to roll over the additional 20 nights that I’d normally be able to if I didn’t hold that card).
Gift Gold Status
- Members who stay 60 or more nights in a calendar year can gift gold status to somebody else. If you stay 100 nights the gift is upgraded to Diamond status.
Seems Hilton is putting much more of an emphasis on nights stayed rather than your actual status level. This makes sense given they are giving out their highest level status on a credit card.
Our Verdict
I personally think Hilton is creating two tiers of status:
- Status obtained via nights
- Status obtained via credit cards/status matches
If you spend a lot of nights in Hilton properties then these changes are entirely positive (apart from maybe the miles option being removed). If you obtain your status from a credit card then you get a very slight improvement on your earning rate but things largely stay the same. If you don’t have status then the changes are almost entirely negative. I also think it’s important to not look at these changes in a vacuum, Hilton doesn’t offer award charts anymore so it’s much more difficult to determine when they make devaluations to how much points are worth. We are planning on doing a lot more work on this space in 2018 (point valuations) to keep Hilton and other brands honest.
