Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

How to earn 10,000 Avios with your next five Hilton stays

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UPDATE – APRIL 2024:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.  We produce a monthly summary of the top hotel bonus point offers – please click HERE or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ menu above.

Click here for our article on Hilton’s ‘Points Plus’ promotion which runs from 1st January to 1st May 2024. You can register for the offer by clicking here.

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Hilton has launched an aggressive promotion with Avios to encourage you to move your stays across to them this Summer.

You can earn 10,000 Avios from your next five Hilton stays.  Importantly, there are no spend, brand or night caps.

It may even be enough to tip the balance if you were thinking of doing a mattress run for Hilton Diamond or Gold status.  Let me explain ….

How the deal works

The current general Hilton Honors promotion, which runs until 31st August, offers double base points on all stays (triple points for Hilton Diamond members).  I wrote about this promotion here and you will find the registration link in that article.  You should register for that offer even if you intend to take part in this new Avios offer.

The new Avios promotion works alongside the double points offer.  You will receive both.

The Avios offer is outlined on this page, where you can also register.

In summary:

You will earn 2,000 bonus Avios on each of your next 5 Hilton stays

ALL Hilton stays count, at any brand, of any length of stay, of any price.  Reward stays may or may not count, as you would usually not receive miles – only points – on incidental spend on reward stays.

You need to register for the offer via this page

You need to change your Hilton Honors earning preference in your profile to ‘Points and Miles’ and set British Airways Executive Club as your airline partner

Stays must be completed by 31st August

This offer will work alongside the ‘double base points’ offer.  So, for example, for a member without status:

‘Points and Miles’ standard earning rate: 10 base Hilton points per $1 spent plus 1 Avios per $1 spent

Rate after registering for the Avios offer:  10 base Hilton points per $1 spent plus 1 Avios per $1 spent plus 2000 Avios bonus

Rate after registering for both offers:  20 base Hilton points per $1 spent plus 1 Avios per $1 spent plus 2000 Avios bonus

This is a pretty chunky rebate.  A spend of £50 would trigger, adjusting for VAT, roughly 1,080 Hilton points plus 2,042 Avios.  That is worth about £20-£25 to most people.  Hilton status members would receive even more.

Don’t forget to register for the ‘2000 Avios’ offer here and the ‘double base points’ offer here.

Why should you consider a mattress run to get Hilton status?

Hilton is currently offering a path to status until 31st March 2019 if you have status with another hotel programme.

Here are the rules:

If you have top tier status in another programme, you will get 90 days of Hilton Diamond with an extension to 31st March 2019 if you complete 8 stays in 90 days

If you have mid tier status in another programme, you will get 90 days of Hilton Gold with an extension to 31st March 2019 if you complete 4 stays in 90 days

Hilton status can be valuable.  A Diamond member is guaranteed club lounge access at properties with a lounge, plus free breakfast.  A Gold member is guaranteed free breakfast.  (Some brands are excluded from this, mainly Waldorf-Astoria.)  There are also upgrade and late check-out benefits.

The full list of Hilton Honors Diamond status benefits is here.

Let’s imagine that you can’t move 4 or 8 stays to Hilton within 90 days.  Do you, however, have a cheap Hilton property near where you live or work?

Let’s imagine there is a local hotel selling for £50 on a quiet Friday, Saturday or Sunday night.  If you booked yourself in for 4 or 8 one-night stays, you would earn 2,000 Avios on each of your first five stays plus double Hilton base points (triple base points if you are doing a Diamond challenge) via the other promotion.

Depending on how you valued the Avios and Hilton points, your net cost for achieving Hilton Diamond could be around £250.  Hilton Gold could have a net cost of at little as £100 after factoring in 8,000 Avios plus the base Hilton points from 4 x £50 stays.

This is a worse case scenario.  If you can manage a few Hilton stays from your existing travel plans, the net cost to do the extra mattress run nights would be even lower.

You need to think this through, of course.  Hilton Diamond doesn’t have much value if your travel plans between now and 31st March 2019 won’t feature a few high-end Hilton / Conrad / Waldorf-Astoria hotels, preferably ones with executive lounges.

For what it’s worth, I registered for the Hilton Diamond match before our recent trip to Asia and, through a combination of holiday stays, work stays and a couple of mattress run nights, I will hit the eight nights target.


How to earn Avios from UK credit cards

How to earn Avios from UK credit cards (April 2024)

As a reminder, there are various ways of earning Avios points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses!

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

There are two official British Airways American Express cards with attractive sign-up bonuses:

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

British Airways American Express

5,000 Avios for signing up and an Economy 2-4-1 voucher for spending £15,000 Read our full review

You can also get generous sign-up bonuses by applying for American Express cards which earn Membership Rewards points. These points convert at 1:1 into Avios.

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Run your own business?

We recommend Capital on Tap for limited companies. You earn 1 Avios per £1 which is impressive for a Visa card, along with a sign-up bonus worth 10,500 Avios.

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

You should also consider the British Airways Accelerating Business credit card. This is open to sole traders as well as limited companies and has a 30,000 Avios sign-up bonus.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

There are also generous bonuses on the two American Express Business cards, with the points converting at 1:1 into Avios. These cards are open to sole traders as well as limited companies.

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which earn Avios. This includes both personal and small business cards.

Comments (115)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Mark LLL says:

    Book through the app and get another 500 Hilton points.

    If air miles partner is set at time of booking Hilton stay, then cancelling my existing bookings, changing my points preference settings and rebooking should allow earning points plus miles.

    • Rob says:

      It’s not ‘set’ at the time of booking to the extent that it cannot be changed. In theory, any change you make up to check-out should be reflected. However, if you have changed settings it is always worth confirming with the hotel.

      This works both ways, by the way. If you make a booking but then lose your status, the hotel will often still treat you as if you had your old status level from the booking date.

      • Alan says:

        The key thing for folk to understand is that changing your airline preferred partner makes NO DIFFERENCE to existing bookings, only the points earning style preference. For flexible bookings you can go in and change the points partner details, however this doesn’t always come through to the hotel. I would always check before and after check-out. Some properties are very confused about how to do this (Hilton Tallinn and Hilton Helsinki Airport in my most recent experience!). Amazingly I did manage to get Hilton Diamond Desk to correct some misposted points after the hotel didn’t change it, but previously they have been unwilling to do this.

    • S879 says:

      When do the 500 points post. After the stay?

    • Alex W says:

      Good point. With the flakiness of the shopping portals I might switch to booking through the app instead.

  • Chelseafi says:

    O/T the Amex plat upgrade from gold link no longer active, annoying went to upgrade this morning, I called customer service and they said they don’t offer points for upgrade and just suggested I cancel card and reapply in 6 months. From experience is it worth another call to ask again and or send a secure message asking for upgrade and 20k points?

    • Chris Palmer says:

      Yes, I asked for 20k points to upgrade from Gold. They came back with an offer of 10k. After a bit of negotiation, I got them up to 20k.

  • Nate1309 says:

    I have had points post in the past. I do have some pending at the moment, one set from January. Not declined but pending would you have chased this up by now?

    • Jordie says:

      i chased mine up from january and then they posted ina couple of days

  • shd says:

    How quickly have Hilton been responding to status match requests?
    I submitted mine on Tuesday evening, haven’t heard anything yet…

  • Tony Wong says:

    O/T, got an email from hilton grand vacation promoting a £199 package of 2-night stay in London Hilton Metropole, daily breakfast, 5k points and £40 theatre vouchers. Need to attend a 90 minutes long sales presentation though. Anyone has experience to share?

    • barras says:

      I get this quite frequently too, also for the Hilton Craigendarroch in Scotland. Also had the same thing in person promo’d in the lobby at Hilton Times Square and a Doubletree in Orlando. Would be interesting to know if the offer is worth surviving the pitch!

    • Alex W says:

      I’ve done one of these in New York. It was quite a good deal for a stay at Christmas time.

      The sales pitch was an endurance test but make sure to attend with your +1 (if that’s a condition) and stay until the end otherwise they can charge you the hotel rack rate.

      Just go along with it and don’t let on until the end that you have no intention whatsoever of entering into their time share scheme, which is a blatant scam with ridiculous annual fees and saddles you with a debt which is way higher than the real value of the time share.

      Don’t be tempted by the option to convert the time share points into hhonors. They massively over value the points, above the price you can buy them for.

      My wife found the sales tactics quite upsetting but go into it with your eyes open and your wallet shut. I found it mildly amusing and crammed in as many free cakes and coffees as I could manage in the 2 hours.

    • Tony Wong says:

      Thanks all. Will take a look.

  • barras says:

    We’ve had HH Gold for the last few years either as a result of the occasional peak in HH Barclaycard spend or the odd promo (e.g. renew Gold when completing x stays in x days etc), rarely due to actually staying the full 40 nights or whatever the threshold is! Due to a new arrival in the family last year, our hotel nights went through the floor for the first nine months or so meaning we have now dropped back to the base Silver you get with the credit card. Does anyone know if there are any routes back up to Gold other than just re qualifying in full via the stays/nights requirement? I have seen the odd reference to employer specific deals for Gold in four stays etc but don’t think I’ve seen any for ‘public’ use. Any thoughts – or should I brace myself for having to start booking BB rates again now that we’re languishing at Silver?!

    • Alex says:

      You would have to spend another £10k within 12 months on the barclaycard to regain gold status for the rest of that year plus the following 12 months

      • Genghis says:

        £10k in the calendar year, no?

        • Rob says:

          Yes, calendar

          • Kevin says:

            If the HH barclaycard started in March, is the £10k 12 months required spend for gold status is referring to next year Feb or just to the end of Dec of the year?

          • Rob says:

            This December, as I understand it.

          • Kevin says:

            Thanks for the clarification as I always thought 12 months cycle. Will bear in mind next time of the accumulative spend.

    • Billy says:

      Apply for Amex Platinum, Hilton Gold is one of the “perks”

    • Sanya Agarwal says:

      I messaged HH through Online chat and they offered me a fastrack to gold for 4 stays/8 nights.

    • The Original Nick. says:

      Amex Platinum?

  • Genghis says:

    Not exactly the best drafting but “Bonus Points earned on Base Points” implies this, no?

  • Chris Cannon says:

    I saw this on Johns LL site last night. Was a bit miffed to hear the promo started 15th May but wasn’t communicated!

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