Is It Worth Buying Hilton Points?

If you’ve started collecting Hilton Points through hotel stays, credit card spend or various other means you’ve probably come across the option to buy Hilton Points in one form or another and wondered Is It Worth Buying Hilton Points? Let’s look at a few scenarios below…

Is It Worth Buying Hilton Points?

Before you begin answering this question you need to know what your valuation of Hilton points is. As we value Avios at 1p with a 1:1 exchange rate from American Express we value Hilton at 0.5p due to the 1:2 exchange rate. This because if we didn’t convert to Hilton points we’d use them on Avios where we can get 1p+ value per point. You can read our thoughts on how to value Avios points here – https://pointsuncovered.com/avios/are-avios-points-worth-it-for-you/ – the same principles can be applied to Hilton points too.

Be careful though, just because you value a point at a certain amount… it doesn’t mean you will get that value for it! These are minimum ‘values’ that we will let our points go for.

What’s the cost of buying Hilton Points?

If you buy from Hilton without a sale or special offer the price is $10 per 1,000 Hilton points (around £7.10.) which means you are paying roughly 0.71p a point. You can purchase them here – https://www.hilton.com/en/hilton-honors/guest/purchase-points/ – occasionally Hilton runs offers on purchasing points which will decrease the cost per point. At the moment there is a 100% bonus running which means you’d be getting 0.355p a point.

As you can see generally you are paying 0.71p a Hilton Points. Almost 50% above our valuation! Even with an offer on I would avoid buying Hilton points except in two circumstances.

1) If I knew I could get outsized value from my purchase e.g. I was getting more value than what I paid. My favourite example for this is the Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi. The price for this hotel is 150,000 points a night & a random week in March 22 prices up at around £1700 a night which means at 150,000 points you are getting 1.13p worth of value, well over our 0.5p valuation. 

How do you work out the value? Look at the dates/hotel you want to book, divide the cash price by the cost in points. For example, if the hotel costs £120 or 40,000 points you’d divide 120 by 40,000 which equals 0.003, that’s 0,3p worth of value… not so great in this example.

2) I needed a small number of points for a redemption I wanted to make.

In both cases, I would need to be travelling or booking in the near future to consider doing this. Why? It’s possible a redemptions value goes down if the cash price drops, there could be a devaluation of Hilton points or you may not be able to get redemption availability at the hotel you want.

How else can I earn Hilton Points?

Other than Hotel stays the main way of earning Hilton Points is via credit card spend. Unfortunately in the UK the Hilton Credit Card has been closed for new applicants for a while but you can indirectly earn them from any membership reward American Express. One membership reward points converts into 2 Hilton points and some of the cards come with generous sign-up bonuses. For more details/referral link see here – https://pointsuncovered.com/amex-referral-link-uk/ – for example, the Amex Gold Card’s welcome bonus (20,000 membership reward points for spending 3K in 3 months) converts into 40,000 Hilton points.

You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly through the Virgin Atlantic credit cards. Two Virgin Points can be converted in three Hilton Honors points. You can find more information/apply here – https://www.virginatlantic.com/gb/en/flying-club/credit-card.html – the welcome bonus on the Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Credit Card would convert into 22,500 Hilton points.

Have you considered buying Hilton points in the past? What do you think… Is It Worth Buying Hilton Points?