Citi^® Hilton Honors™ Visa Signature^® Card — Full Review [2024]

Great Card If

• You love Hilton hotels and want a card to help you quickly earn more points
• You want a card with no annual fee that still offers decent benefits
• You plan on purchasing everything on the card, which will allow you to earn the additional bonuses offered
• You want to boost yourself to Gold status quickly to take advantage of the added benefits

Don’t Get If

• Hilton is not your go-to hotel chain and you have a different preference some of the time
• Transferring airline points is part of your strategy

Sign-Up Bonus, Points, and Silver Elite Status

With the Hilton Signature card, you’ll be earning points at 6x for all Hilton portfolio stays; 3x for gas stations, supermarkets and drugstores; and 2x everywhere else.

When using your card to earn points, you earn them as bonus points and they accrue in your Honors account. Unfortunately, these don’t go toward your elite status.

However, as another bonus of owning the card, you automatically earn Silver Status for being a card holder.

Silver members get a 15% bonus on points earned for your stay (not from your Hilton credit card), as well as some other perks like 5th night free (on standard 5-night redemptions) and late check out.

Bottom Line:  The Hilton Signature card earns 6x points at Hilton; 3x points for gas, supermarkets, and drugstores; and 2x everywhere else.

More Elite Status Benefits

Earning status in the loyalty program is made easier using the Hilton Signature card. You automatically get Silver status as discussed above, and you have the opportunity to fast track to Gold status.

To do this, just complete 4 stays in Hilton brand hotels within the first 90 days (instead of the typical 20 stays in a year). Not too difficult for a frequent traveler!

Gold status can also be earned by spending $20,000 or more on the card in a given year. If you’re using this as your main card, after a year you would likely hit this threshold.

With Gold status, your bonus point earnings increase to 25%, you get all the other benefits of the previous tiers, and you get additional upgrades and points depending on which hotel you’re staying at.

If you stay enough times to make Diamond, you’ll get even sweeter deals!

Bottom Line: Gain automatic Silver status when you own the Hilton Signature card. Fast track to Gold by completing 4 stays within the first 90 days!

Other Perks of the Hilton Signature Card

One great thing about the Hilton Signature card is it does not have an annual fee. Most cards that earn toward partnered programs like hotels and airlines have annual fees, so it is refreshing to see one that doesn’t!

This makes it a lot easier when deciding whether or not to open the card since it doesn’t have much of a downside.

Additionally, if you spend $1,000 or more at Hilton portfolio hotels in a given year, you will automatically earn 10,000 bonus points.

Finally, it’s worth noting that as a Visa Signature cardholder, you get access to all the benefits of that program. These include a free concierge service; discounts on events, museums, transportation; and a host of other things.

The Visa Signature page is like a discount coupon site, so search through it to find things that might be of value to you.

Bottom Line:  There is no annual fee on the Hilton Signature card. Also, if you spend $1,000 or more in a year, you will automatically earn 10,000 bonus Hilton Honors points!

Drawbacks of the Hilton Credit Card and Honors

While you do earn points at a higher rate on the Hilton Signature card, one caveat is that the program uses a larger scale points system.

Hilton claims that rewards can be redeemed for a room with as little as 5,000 points a night, but more commonly seen are rooms from 20,000-50,000 points per night.

This is a large difference, and some rooms cost as much as 70,000 points. It will be up to you to determine how to use them. You could potentially earn many redemptions, as long as the places you want to travel are in areas with cheaper rewards rates.

A room at 40,000 points may typically cost $185, which values each point at around $0.0046. That’s about half the amount a typical rewards point is worth.

You can also use points to get room upgrades, but this is more confusing and not very standardized, so you’ll have to check what rates you can get for the room you are looking for.

However, Gold and Diamond members already receive complimentary room upgrades when available, so this may not be necessary!

Bottom Line: Hilton’s scale is different than that of other programs, so while you earn a lot of points with the Hilton Signature card, that doesn’t always translate into a ton of redemptions.

Best Way To Redeem Hilton Honors Points

Because the Honors system is very complex, it is difficult to determine the best way to redeem your points once you’ve gone through the trouble of earning them. Hopefully this section helps sort some of that confusion out:

Tip #1: Look for redemptions at the lowest amount of points (it starts at 5,000). Although you may have a minimum standard of expectation for room quality, it can vary drastically between chains and even hotels within the same chain.

Look for reviews and ask the hotel about their rooms to see if staying at a cheaper rewards rate room might hold the same quality as a more expensive one.

Tip #2: Consider both the split pay option as well as the normal points option for rewards. Sometimes the value can be better in one or the other.

For example, a room at a Hampton Inn that would cost $124 for a Friday night in Austin, TX could be redeemed for 30,000 points (a value of $0.004 per point). The split pay option costs $50 and 12,000 points, which in this case is almost the same value.

Checking similar deals, another room had a better value per point if you just redeemed the whole room with points ($0.006 versus $0.004).

Tip #3: Use the 5th night free option and book in multiples of 5 to get the best value. Booking a five night redemption will get you a discount equal to one night.

You can do this for 4 free nights on up to a 20-night consecutive stay, and it will be automatically credited during your redemption.

Tip #4: While there are Premium Room Rewards available, they are usually much lower value than a normal redemption. One calculation we did came in at around $0.003 versus $0.004+ in the examples above.

If you’re interested in redeeming for a Premium Room, be sure to calculate a comparison for a normal room reward.

Best Way To Maximize Honors Points

There are a bunch of different ways to earn Hilton points with your Hilton Signature card. You’ll do best by implementing multiple strategies, as many Honors rewards require a higher number of points:

Tip #1: Use your card whenever you stay at Hilton Hotels. This ensures you earn 6x points on the card and 10-15x points through the program (depending on your status).

Tip #2: Go into your Honors profile right away and sign up for the bonus earning style; you’ll get either 5 extra bonus points per stay, or 1+ airline miles (depending on the airline you choose).

Tip #3: Once you hit Gold or Diamond status, be sure to ask the hotel for the bonus point offerings for each stay. You can earn between 100-2,000 extra bonus points on top of your regular points just for staying at certain hotel chains.

Tip #4: Watch for deals from Hilton, as they often offer double or triple points for stays. This means your 10-15 points could go up to 20-45 points per stay for the Honors earned points.

Tip #5: You can only earn base points on up to 2 rooms at a time, as well as bonus points on normal rates. Bonus points from other offers are only available on a single room.

Tip #6: Make any purchases through the hotel on your room bill to ensure they get counted as a hotel. Sometimes, the restaurants and other services do not get counted in the hotel category when paying separately.

Tip #7: Transfer points earned through other cards or programs to your Hilton Honors account if they are a partner. This way you earn maximum points in multiple card categories rather than just the 2-3x on the card.

Tip #8: Find ways to reach status more quickly, such as staying in a hotel only one night if your travel is flexible. Sometimes earning status can be quicker if you earn it through stays. Higher status equals more points!

Bonus Tip:  Earn lots of extra points when you sign up to the dining program and head out to eat for the night!

Alternative to the Hilton Signature Card

If after reading this, you don’t feel the Hilton Signature card is the card for you, then you might want to try another rewards card.

Marriott Bonvoy Boundless™ Card

The Marriott Boundless card is a great hotel card alternative. It earns 6x points at Marriott properties. These points transfer to lots of great travel partners.

You also get elite status benefits and the card typically comes with a good sign-up bonus.

American Express^® Gold Card

Finally, a popular flexible point travel rewards card is the Amex Gold card, which earns 3x points for airfare booked directly with the airline and comes with a ton of great benefits and perks.