Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Wow. Amex and Hilton just announced their new credit card lineup, and it looks good. Very good (especially the new Aspire card). I’ve created a new resource page with all of the details: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know. I’m still wrapping my head around some of this, so I expect to update that page frequently. I also plan to analyze the heck out of the new lineup, look into “transition planning” for those of us with existing Amex or Citi Hilton cards, look for short-term transition opportunities, and review the new cards in depth.
In the meantime, here are five things you need to know…
#1: The New Card Lineup Begins January 18th 2018
All four cards have no foreign transaction fees and earn Hilton Honors points for spend:
- Amex Hilton Aspire: $450 annual fee, Automatic Hilton Diamond status, $250 automatic resort statement credit each membership year, $250 airline incidental fee credit each calendar year, free weekend night each year, free Priority Pass.
- Amex Hilton
AscendUpdate: Now called “Surpass”: $95 annual fee, Automatic Hilton Gold status, free weekend night with $15K spend, 10 free Priority Pass™ Lounge passes - Amex Hilton Business: $95 annual fee, Automatic Hilton Gold status, free weekend night with $15K spend and another at $60K spend, 10 free Priority Pass™ Lounge passes
- Amex Hilton No Fee: Automatic Silver status, Gold status after $20K spend
Full details about each card (including point earning rates) can be found here: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know.
#2: Citi Hilton cardholders will become Amex Hilton Cardholders
Existing Citi Hilton cardholders will be transitioned by January 30th 2018 as follows:
| Current Card |
New Card |
|---|---|
| Citi Hilton Honors (no annual fee) | Hilton Honors American Express Card (no annual fee) |
| Citi Hilton Honors Reserve Card ($95 annual fee) | Hilton Honors American Express |
#3 Citi Hilton Honors Reserve cardholders can still earn their free weekend night with $10K spend
If you were putting spend on the card to earn a weekend night award after $10K membership year spend, your spend to-date will transition to Amex and they will honor the free night after $10K spend. Previously, with Citi, you didn’t get your free night certificate until the end of your membership year. With Amex I think (but I’m not sure) that we have a one-time opportunity to earn the free night certificate within 8 weeks of achieving $10K spend.
This benefit has now transitioned to a free weekend night certificate after $15K in purchases in a calendar year.
#4: Amex Hilton cardholders will get new cards
Existing Amex Hilton cardholders will be transitioned to new cards as follows:
| Current Card |
New Card |
|---|---|
| Hilton Honors Card from American Express (no annual fee) | Hilton Honors American Express Card (no annual fee) |
| Hilton Honors Surpass Card from American Express ($75 annual fee) | Hilton Honors American Express |
Unlike the current Hilton cards, the new Amex Hilton cards have no foreign transaction fees.
#5 We will have new welcome bonus opportunities
Almost all Amex cards welcome offers include the terms: “Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product.” Since at least two of the new cards are brand new, everyone should have a chance to earn new welcome bonuses with them. At the very least, we should be able to get a welcome bonus with the new business card. There is no word yet on what those welcome bonuses will be.
I think that all four cards will be technically considered new products, but I’m unsure of the no-fee card since it hasn’t changed much. Amex could also argue that the Ascend card is the same product as the Surpass card, but I think that’s a huge stretch. I’m 99% sure that the Ascend card will be considered a new product. That said, there is also some chance that Amex will include offer terms that state something like this: “Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product or the Hilton Honors Surpass Card from American Express.” I don’t think that Amex will do this, but you should be on the lookout for it, just in case.
In order to have the chance of getting a welcome bonus for the no fee card or the Ascend card, you’ll have to make sure that your current cards aren’t transitioned to those cards. I’ll followup with another post on the pros and cons of cancelling existing cards for that purpose.
Bonus #6: It looks like the new cards will support contactless payments
I don’t know if this is a mistake or real, but current card images show wifi symbols that indicate that they support contactless payments (e.g. wave your card over the payment terminal to pay). This is common in other countries, but not common today in the US:
Read on and stay tuned
I will be following up with more analysis soon. In the meantime, please take a look at this resource page: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know.
Information in this post was derived mostly from these external resources:
- Amex Hilton Press Release
- Amex Hilton Credit Card Page
- Official transition info for those with Citi Hilton cards
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Does anyone know if the 10 priority pass with the new Hilton Ascend will be the same as Chase Sapphire reserve. In another word with each pass you can bring X number of guest?or each pass is for one person like United pass
One pass per person. It’s comparable to the $250 Standard Plus Priority Pass, but better. With the Standard Plus you can’t bring in free guests at all – you have to pay $27 for the guest. With this card you have to use another one of your free passes but you can get your guest in free.
Thanks for this info SharonK!
[…] Amex and Hilton’s new credit card lineup will be live on January 18th 2018. The new lineup means an end to Hilton Amex foreign transaction fees, a first-ever business Hilton card, and more. Full details can be found here: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know. See also: 5 things you need to know about the new Hilton credit cards. […]
Greg, are the 10x free PP lounge admissions to be used just for the primary Amex account holder? Anyone who is an authorized card-holder (I.e. spouse who is on the account but card has a different number)? Or can the account holder ‘share’ one of the admissions with a child for example? So instead of coming in 10x for free, it’s 5x with a guest for 5x?
I’ve had the surpass card for years and have only used it once during a long layover in a South American city where there wasn’t an alliance lounge for me to use, so the benefit is not so great if I have to pay an additional fee for my wife and son to enter with me. Thanks.
I don’t know whether the 10X free priority passes will allow free guests. I’d assume not. There’s not much info about them out there. My *guess* is that if you wanted to bring guests, you could use 1 free pass for each person in your party.
That is correct. I just talked to a Priority Pass phone rep (trying to get online access to Priority Pass) and she explained it very clearly. As she said, “This is a great benefit!” True, that.
[…] Wow. Amex and Hilton just announced their new credit card lineup, and it looks good. Very good (especially the new Aspire card). I’ve created a new resource page with all of the details: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know. I’m still wrapping my head around some of this, so I expect to update that page frequently. I also plan to analyze the heck out of the new lineup, look into “transition planning” for those of us with existing Amex or Citi Hilton cards, look for short-term transition opportunities, and review the new cards in depth. LEARN MORE! […]
[…] Amex announced a new set of Hilton cards for 2018. This morning, Greg wrote about the benefits of the newly-announced Hilton Aspire card (See: A new […]
[…] 5 things you need to know about the new Hilton credit cards […]
Hi, I don’t have any Hilton cards yet and missed out on the 100k+night bonus on account of my own poor timing and not wanting extra MS while working on other cards, yet I was still looking at getting a Hilton card soon. Do you think it’s worth it to go for one of the existing cards before Jan 18th? Thanks!
If you prefer points over free nights, then yes I’d recommend going for the new 125K Surpass offer. We don’t know yet what the Ascend signup bonus will be, but I’m betting on free weekend nights.
Doesn’t Amex limit you to having four(or maybe five) credit cards? I already have four Amex credit cards, and I have two citi hilton reserve cards Do you think Amex will allow me to have six credit cards after the conversion?
They limit you to 5 credit cards, but I think it’s possible that the conversion will increase the limit. We’ll see!
Omg we have like 20 of those dang Citi Hilton cards from back in the day. The paperwork/Mail alone I’m going to get for the conversion!!! I’m already getting a bunch of emails about it.
I opened a Citi checking account in branch a few years ago and the managers like this can’t be right you have like 10 Hilton cards?!? I didn’t even say a word
Really waffling… I’ve hit the $10k spend on my Citi Hilton Reserve and won’t get the cert until summer. I’ve had the surpass before. If it weren’t for the new cards, I’d obviously just let the conversion happen.
With the transition to the Ascend, I’d lose the chance at a sign up bonus but I’m also trying to stay under 5/24 so it’d have to be a very good sign up bonus for me to think the card is worthwhile. The Surpass never got better than 1 free weekend night + 100k. I value that around $850. Just barely enough for me to burn a 5/24 slot.
I think that in my marginal analysis approach, I’m going to reluctantly let the conversion to Ascend happen.
The conditions under which I’ll regret the letting the conversion go would have to be $850+ in sign up bonus with no restriction referencing prior Surpass account at a time where I have an open slot (I rarely do at Amex) and where there’s an sustained absence of cards offering $850+ in value.
Yep, I think that many are struggling with the same questions. Thanks for laying out your thinking!
I hate the free weekend night. If they make it free night any time then it’s all good. Or just give them to me in points.
Also, thanks for including that Amex might add if the Ascend if a new product – “Welcome bonus offer not available to applicants who have or have had this product or the Hilton Honors Surpass Card from American Express.” I was reading other blogs and they didn’t mention that the Ascend $95 annual might be a new product. I’m thinking it’s going to be a new product – new name, higher annual fee, different bonus.
[…] new of a new line-up of Amex Hilton cards. Frequent Miler has 5 things you need to know about the the new Hilton credit […]
I hope you are right about #3, as the wife and I have 4 reserve cards between us with anniversary dates between February and June that all have the $10,000 already spent on them. Getting the 4 free nights all at once and close to the beginning of the year would be a sweet result, although I don’t really know if we are even going to get moved over to AMEX, as that would put each of us at 8 Amex credit cards (plus one charge card each) and would more than double AMEX exposure to us because of the much higher limits that Citi gave us.
So after looking everywhere to confirm what you wrote in #3 I finally found it on a link after logging into my Citi Hilton accounts. This Citi FAQ is a bit different from the Amex FAQ:
https://online.citi.com/JRS/portal.c?ID=HiltonFAQPage
“16. I am a Citi Hilton Honors Reserve Card holder. I am supposed to have a full “card year” of 12 months to spend $10,000 to receive an anniversary bonus from Hilton Honors. What if I haven’t met the $10,000 spending requirement before my Citi Hilton Honors Reserve Card becomes a Hilton Honors American Express Card?
Up until your account’s first renewal with American Express, American Express will include the spending on your Citi Hilton Honors Reserve Card to calculate when you reach the $10,000 spending requirement. If you meet the spending requirement, you will receive an anniversary bonus certificate from Hilton Honors according to the program’s terms and conditions.”
Now the interesting thing is that the Reserve requirement was cardmember year while the Ascend requirement is calendar year. So technically any spend made in 2018 before the end of your cardmember year should simultaneously count towards both requirements.
I’ve updated the bottom of this post to list the external resources I used. They were (and still are) available at the top of the everything you need to know post too.
Yes, I agree it looks like it is theoretically possible to earn 2 free nights with $15K spend in 2018 if you do at least $10K of the spend between Jan 1 and whenever your Citi Reserve anniversary date is.
Just got an email about my Surpass becoming the Ascend on 1/18/18.