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Hilton scrapping ‘points and fixed miles’ earning from January

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Hilton lost a lot of friends back in February when it unveiled a massive devaluation of the Hilton HHonors programme.  Prices of rooms at top properties jumped from 50,000 points to a maximum of 95,000 points!

Add in other recent changes – some hotels starting to offer a reduced level of free breakfast to Gold card holders, the reduced food and drink offering in UK executive lounges this year, and the way that some hotels used the introduction of ‘premium rewards’ to reduce standard room reward availability – and you might think they would have had enough.

But no!

Hilton Gatwick South

An email arrives:

On January 6, 2014, we will discontinue the Points & Fixed Miles Earning Style. At this time, you will automatically start to earn variable miles, or 10 HHonors Base Points plus one airline mile (or kilometer) per eligible US dollar spent for most stays. This will appear as Points & Miles in your HHonors account profile.

This was one of the few redeeming features of the Hilton HHonors programme.  Although, if I’m honest, it was disproportionately generous and therefore was always on life support.

At present, if you choose ‘points and fixed miles’, you will earn (per Hilton stay) Hilton HHonors points plus 500 Avios points (in BA), 750 Avios points (in Iberia Plus) or 1,000 Virgin Flying Club miles.  (Back in the old BMI days, you get a ludicrous 1,000 BMI miles per night!).

Under the new structure, you will earn 1 airline mile per $1 spent (2 per $1 with Virgin).  This means that, for stays costing less than about £475, you will be worse off if you collect Avios.  For Virgin miles, you are worse off on stays under £325.

This is not the end of the world – Hilton remains, after all, the only programme where you can collect points and airline miles.  You also have the option to not take any airline miles at all and earn a larger number of Hilton points instead, although since they were devalued it is debatable if you want to build up those too much.

How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards

How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards (September 2024)

There are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards.  Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.

Do you know that holders of The Platinum Card from American Express receive FREE Hilton Honors Gold status for as long as they hold the card?  It also comes with Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Radisson Rewards Premium and MeliaRewards Gold status.  We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here and you can apply here.

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and great travel benefits – for a large fee Read our full review

Did you know that the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are a great way of earning Hilton Honors points? Two Virgin Points can be converted into three Hilton Honors points. The Virgin Atlantic cards are the only Visa or Mastercard products in the UK which can indirectly earn Hilton Honors points and they come with generous sign-up bonuses. You can apply here.

You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly with:

and for small business owners:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Platinum is increased to up to 80,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 80,000 Avios. You will receive 8 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 22nd October 2024, the bonus on American Express Business Gold is increased to up to 40,000 Membership Rewards points, worth 40,000 Avios. You will receive 4 points per £1 spent for the first three months, on up to £10,000 of spending. The card is FREE for your first year. Click here to read our full card review. Click here to apply.

The conversion rate from American Express to Hilton points is 1:2.

Click here to read our detailed summary of all UK credit cards which can be used to earn Hilton Honors points. 

(Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)

Category

Hilton Honors

Comments (14)

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

  • Luke says:
    6 Nov6 November 07:30

    Sharjah, UAE Hilton is exempt for the 1000 bonus Avios I’ve learned the hard way.

  • Andrew (@andrewseftel) says:
    6 Nov6 November 07:35

    I think VS will stay at 2pts/$, but this is still a real pain.

    Hopefully Marriott will bring back status challenges – I might defect if they did.

  • Manuel says:
    6 Nov6 November 07:48

    Is the 1000 avios promo for BA over?

  • What's the Point says:
    6 Nov6 November 08:29

    I am hoping that the Hilton will continue to do bonus airline points for certain stays in 2014, which you have to opt into to receive. This will benefit the loyal customer, rather than rewarding everyone with 500-1,000 airlines per stay.
    As for collecting HH points to use on reward stays, the top end hotels are just not worth collecting for. I average around 2,000 HH points per night, so effectively would need 40+ nights for just one night at their top tier hotels…..ridiculous!

    • Rob says:
      6 Nov6 November 10:05

      Even the hotels dislike this. The owner of a couple of Hiltons in New York recently blamed falling profits on a drop in occupancy caused by the collapse of HH reward bookings at his property.

      • mrtibbs1999 says:
        6 Nov6 November 16:29

        I read that and did some further digging. Very insightful regarding the economics of the holiday reward points system. The idea that points collectors have higher in property spends etc on the items that they make massive margin on had never occurred to me. I imagined everyone was a cheapskate like myself 😛

  • pazza2000 says:
    6 Nov6 November 10:36

    Sorry to see the end of this, although I agree it was super generous at times. Back in January I earned 5k VS miles on a £47 night. On a separate note, does anyone know how long it usually takes for IB miles to post? It’s been 2+ weeks since my base miles posted from a stay, although no sign of the IB miles I had my account set to receive. Seems a little longer than I’ve waited for BA/VS in the past.

    • signol says:
      6 Nov6 November 11:26

      Last time took 3 weeks for me. I’m also waiting on another IB Avios stay posting, from 2 1/2 weeks ago.

    • Volker says:
      6 Nov6 November 11:30

      Did five Hilton stays in September, and almost every time the Avios arrived in my IB account within a few days. Regarding the last stay though it took over a week. 3,750 Avios + HH points… another 2 stays in December and that’ll be the end of this nice earning option.

  • Roger says:
    6 Nov6 November 10:55

    Iberia+ fixed miles currently earns 750 per stay BUT the ‘enhancement’ will be to 1 Avios per $10, not 1/$1 as with BA.

    I imagine this will be regularised in due course, but I will be changing from Iberia+ to Virgin Flying Club for 2 VS miles per $.

  • Volker says:
    6 Nov6 November 12:02

    2013 has been a bad year in terms of points devaluation, and 2014 obviously won’t be much different. (Against the backdrop of these recent developments, I am about to give up hope of another half-decent Tesco CC – Avios conversion bonus, too.)
    Always look on the bright side: I will not have to move from one Hilton to another neighbouring one anymore just to earn these extra Avios (well, maybe in order to maintain gold status…), but from now on I will enjoy spending a few nights in the same room lol
    In the future, I will be double-dipping HH points as I am quite happy with their redemption options. There are still some decent points + cash redemptions available, and in the past (before achieving gold), I sometimes got a very pleasant upgrade for as little as 800 points.
    For the time being, Hilton will remain my no. 1 choice; you can usually easily avoid the less nice properties by reading reviews prior to travelling, and I have been very satisfied with the brand so far.

  • gnarlyoldgoatdude says:
    6 Nov6 November 15:41

    By the end of the year I would have earned about 55k Virgin miles from about 30 Hilton Stays. Not bad considering that I’ve never set foot on a VS plane. Instead of earning 1000-6000 miles per stay, I’ll be down to about 230. It’s starting to make IHG’s airline earning rate look generous.

    • Volker says:
      6 Nov6 November 16:52

      Hmmm, that seems a little bit of an exaggeration 😀 I think from now on we should avoid the word “generous” when talking about hotel loyalty programs…

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

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