Hilton Honors Devaluation: Prices Jump 26% at Popular Properties

Bad news for Hilton Honors members. Prices at some of the brand’s most aspirational properties just jumped from 95,000 to 120,000 per night without warning.

Hilton Honors has long had variable award pricing instead of a traditional award chart, however, prices tended to be capped at 95,000 points for a standard room at most high-end properties.

Now that 95,000-point cap seems to be replaced by a 110,000- to 120,000-point cap moving forward.

Let’s take a look at what we know so far…

Hilton Honors Devaluation

There is no doubting that this is a significant devaluation, as Hilton Honors points can now take you fewer places.

For travelers who were planning on booking a bucket list trip, their desired hotel may have just jumped in price by 26% overnight. While the damage seems to be limited (for now) to a handful of high-end resorts, we wouldn’t be surprised if this trend continued throughout the chain.

Some of the impacted hotels are:

• Conrad Maldives Rangali Island: 95,000 to 120,000 points per night (26.3% increase)
• Waldorf Astoria Beverly Hills: 95,000 to 120,000 points per night (26.3% increase)
• Grand Wailea Maui, A Waldorf Astoria Resort: 95,000 to 110,000 points per night (15.7% increase)

I just got back from a stay at the Grand Wailea where I paid 95,000 points per night and thought it was overpriced, so going back and paying 110,000 points is a hard sell for me.

Hot Tip: If you want to get the most from your points before the next devaluation, here are our favorite Hilton Honors hotels to book for maximum value. 

Free Night Certificates

The silver lining here (if you can call it that) is that free night certificates from co-branded credit cards will still be able to be redeemed at these properties despite the higher prices.

So, in a way, these certificates just became more valuable… which I am sure nobody is happy about.

Final Thoughts

There is no way to sugarcoat this. This is a devaluation by Hilton Honors with no advanced notice, which is a bummer.

On top of having no award chart, we can now expect Hilton Honors to make redemptions even less valuable, which only makes competitors like World of Hyatt more appealing in my eyes — at least it gave us a heads up about price changes.

A 15% to 26% overnight increase in price is huge, especially for travelers trying to plan a week-plus long vacation who now need to come up with another 100,000 points just to book the same hotel.

If you are sitting on some Hilton Honors points and thinking about a future trip, consider booking now to lock in rates in case more price hikes are coming.