After signing up for the Hilton Honors American Express credit card this past year, I was tempted to buy extra Hilton Honors points, but I’m sure glad I did my research first because what I found out about the value of Hilton Honors Points shocked me.
Should You Buy Hilton Honors Points?
When you go to hilton.com to buy points, you’ll quickly notice that every 1,000 points you buy costs $10.
Without any other context, this sounds reasonable, but let’s compare this ratio of points to dollars with the actual cost of a hotel, and let’s use my recent stay at a Hampton Inn in Amarillo, TX as an example. A non-smoking, King bed for 1 night in Amarillo can be redeemed for either 16,000 points or $105.94.
| Room | Buy with Points | Buy with Money |
| 1 night in Amarillo | 16,000 points | $105.94 |
Based on the ratio of 1,000 points equaling $10, this means that a hotel room worth 16,000 points should cost $160, but it only costs me $105 when paying with cash.
So if I were to buy 16,000 points for $160 from hilton.com and redeem these points for this hotel room, I’d actually be spending $55 more than if I were to simply pay for the room with money.
I thought this was perhaps an anomaly, but in my research, I consistently have seen hotel rooms across the country and around the world where it costs less to use cash than buy points.
What About Hilton Points Bonuses?
Nnever does it make sense to buy Hilton Honors points… that was until I saw an offer to “buy 80,000 points and get 80,000 points for free”.
While I was tempted, the offer was only good until September 20th, and I got busy as September 20th came and went, and I didn’t take advantage of this offer.
Two days later though, I got another chance to buy double points because the offer was extended for a few more days.
I thought it was my lucky day, so driven by FOMO, I jumped at the second opportunity to buy these points without doing any research, and my credit card failed.
I now wish that I spent time with customer service to figure this out, because when Hilton Honors points are on sale for pretty much buy one, get one free, it actually makes a lot of sense to stock up.
You see, in the case of my Amrillio, TX hotel room, instead of spending $160 for 16,000 points, I’d only have to spend $80 for 16,000 points. And if you remember, the hotel room costs $105 per night, so by buying points when they’re on sale, I would have saved $25 per night.
Only Buy Hilton Points On Sale
I know this might be a little confusing, but the simple goal here is to never buy Hilton honors points at a non-promotional price.
While the non-promotional price is 1 cent per point, you never want to pay more than ½ cent per point.
It sounds counterintuitive, but to get a deal, the key takeaway here is that you want your hotel room to cost more than ½ cent per point.
For example, in Amarillo, my hotel room at $105 per night divided by 16,000 points is 0.66 cents. If I bought my points for ½ cent each, I’m getting a deal.
On the other hand, if I want to stay in a king studio suite in downtown Dallas, the nightly rate of $112.62 divided by 37,000 points is 0.3 cents. Because I bought my points for ½ each, I’m losing out here.
Please let me know down below if you have any questions below, and if you want to earn 80,000 free Hilton Honor points, use my referral link here 👉 http://refer.amex.us/TONYFfuHo?XLINK=MYCP
