Maximize Hilton resort credit without staying every year

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I’ve written quite a bit lately about hotel credit cards, specifically noting my intention to migrate away from the many flavors of Marriott. I also recently noted how interesting I find the new World of Hyatt card — but due to Hyatt’s limited footprint, I couldn’t focus on Hyatt alone. And I wouldn’t have to — because the hotel card I’m most excited about is undoubtedly the Hilton Aspire card. Last night, I booked a stay for next year and got even more excited when I realized how I could maximize the $250 annual resort credit….

a plane on a dock

Hilton Honors Aspire Benefits

I’m actively excited about the Hilton Honors Aspire card that launched earlier this year because it comes with very generous benefits. For a $450 annual fee, every year you get:

  • Annual free weekend night certificate
  • $250 airline incidentals credit (with one chosen airline) per calendar year
  • $250 Hilton resort credit per membership year (must be used at a Hilton Resort)
  • Diamond status

There are also some less tangible benefits you can read about in our full review of the card here.

Personally, I think this card is hands down the best value in hotel cards (at least now that the $49 IHG card is no longer available). The airline incidental credits are only good for one airline, but we maintain a resource page about what still works to trigger Amex airline reimbursements here. I chose Southwest as my airline this year and my data points match what you’ll find on that page.

Diamond status doesn’t provide a huge advantage over Gold status, but it does come with automatic lounge access, which can certainly help you save a few bucks with drinks and snacks.

The annual free weekend night certificate works at almost any Hilton property in the world (just excluding a small handful of all-inclusives and more condo-like properties without standard rooms). You can use it in New York, Hong Kong, the Maldives, etc. If only the night I need near San Jose Airport were a weekend night, I’d put mine to use for huge value there (read more on that here). It really wouldn’t be hard for me to get more than $450 in value out of the $250 airline credit and the free uncapped weekend night alone. Heck, in the right city or at the right time of year, you might very well get a room that would have cost more than $450 with the free weekend night certificate.

In my opinion, the hardest of the tangible benefits to use is the Hilton resort credit because it must be used at a resort. That said, I’ve got some ideas on that. . .

Hilton Aspire Resort Credit

The Hilton Aspire resort credit must be used at a Hilton resort (the full list of properties classified as a resort for this credit can be found at this link). That said, the credit is otherwise pretty unrestricted — it can be used toward anything that gets charged to your hotel bill, including the room rate itself. In other words, you can get this rebate just by paying your room bill — or use it in conjunction with an award stay to get credited for your restaurant, bar, or spa tab, etc.

But the difficulty with that is it means you have to stay at a Hilton resort every year in order to get the credit. Except, maybe you don’t…..

Hilton Conrad Maldives Rangali Island

a pool and a hut with a hot tub on the water
These Conrad Maldives Rangali Island website pics look pretty nice…

Arguably the most aspirational property in the Hilton portfolio is the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island. This is the place you always see in posts about using your free night certificate — as though you would fly all the way to the Maldives to use one free night. This hotel has the underwater restaurant where you can watch the fish pass overhead.

a restaurant with tables and chairs under a blue wall

It is also notable for the fact that overwater villas have been included as a “standard room” for award booking since sometime last year. That means you can book an overwater villa with your annual free night certificate — or you can book one with 95,000 Hilton Honors points.

a woman sitting in a bathtub

Better yet, if you book a 5-night stay, the 5th nigh is free — dropping your cost down to an average of 76,000 Hilton Honors points per night for an overwater villa. That seems pretty darn amazing.

a screenshot of a hotel reward

And it’s even more amazing when you compare it to cash rates for the same room and same dates.

a screenshot of a web page
That comes out to $1,592.04 per night after taxes and fees.

Of course, there’s a catch. Like most of the aspirational Maldives properties, it isn’t easy to get there. Flying to the Maldives isn’t necessarily that challenging — awards to the Maldives are usually available. The trouble is that once you arrive, you typically need to take a private seaplane or a domestic Maldivian Air plane to transfer from the airport to the island of your chosen hotel — and you can’t use miles to book that. To get to the Conrad, like most of the other top-shelf properties, you have to pay $500 round trip per person for the seaplane or domestic flight transfer. For a thirty minute flight. Ouchie-wowie.

But the other day I got to thinking about it and wondered whether you pay that fee directly to the seaplane operator……or do you pay it directly to the Conrad? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this — and sure enough, you pay it directly to the Conrad.

a screenshot of a white text

The seaplane fee is actually $500 + 12% tax — so $560 total. They charge you extra for more than 55lbs of luggage, blah blah blah. But, you’ve already seen where I’m going with this — since you pay this fee to the hotel directly, your Hilton Aspire resort credit should work for this. My understanding is that like the airline credits, this credit triggers automatically with a qualifying charge, so when you pay this at checkout with your room folio, it should automatically get you the $250 credit. That drops the seaplane transfer down to a much more palatable (but still ludicrous) $310 round trip.

But that’s still too much. And then I got to thinking more about it….I wonder if you can make a deposit this year to trigger this year’s credit…..

And so, in the name of science, I went ahead and booked a 5-night award stay in an overwater villa for next year for a total of 380,000 Hilton Honors points.

Note one key thing: advanced purchase rates for resorts in the US won’t be credited. See this post at Flyertalk for more on that. Technically, the benefit terms state that you must pay at checkout to get the credit on the Aspire card, but datapoints at Flyertalk indicate that prepaid rates at properties outside of the US will trigger the automatic reimbursement.

Back to my experiment….Immediately after booking, I sent an email to the hotel, asking it if would be possible for me to put down a deposit this year for my stay next year — you know, for my personal accounting purposes — and pay the balance at checkout. I got a response in four minutes.

Dear Nicholas,

Thanks for your email. Great to see your early booking.

Depending on your reservation there might be some advance payment required, if not required you can easily do prepayment any time you wish by using the attached credit card form. We will then add the amounts on your folio, so upon check out all you have the pay is the balance.

You can pay anytime but please add the reservation number on the form so we can track your booking nicely.

Boom. That’s the answer I wanted to hear — not only is it possible, it sounds pretty clear that I could make several payments if I wanted. That’s perfect because my wife also has the Aspire card. If each of us paid $250 this year and $250 next year upon checkout (our stay is booked after our anniversary date), we’ll end up owing $60 each for the round trip seaplane transfer after our resort credits.

Unfortunately, since I booked the stay after our anniversary date (that’s the only way to get the $250 credit twice for each of us since that credit resets after anniversary, unlike the airline credit which is per calendar year), we could not use our current free weekend night certificates to extend our 5-night award stay. The annual free weekend night certificate that comes with the Hilton Aspire card can not be extended. You have to stay before the expiration date, and ours expire before the stay I booked on points.

The good news is that I booked the 5-night award stay from Sunday-Friday. That way, when we get our new weekend night certificates at renewal, we could find availability for either the Friday and Saturday before or Saturday and Sunday after it to extend to a 7-night stay using both of our annual certificates. Given the cost of eating in the Maldives, I’m not sure we’d do that anyway. That said, it looks like Gold and Diamond members get a decent amount of free food and drink each day….

But that’s a lot in annual fees

a hands holding money bags

Those keeping score at home probably think that sounds just dandy — but holy moley that’s a lot in annual fees. You’re not wrong. Since the $250 resort credit comes back again after your anniversary, we would both have to pay for the card both this year and next year in order to each use the credit twice. That means that altogether, we’ll pay $450 x 4 = $1,800. That’s a lotta cheddar. But let’s break that down. For $1,800, we’ll get:

  • $1,500 in airline credits. Follow me here: The $250 per person airline credit is per calendar year. We opened our cards in early 2018. That means we’ll each get $250 this year ($500 total). We’ll then get that benefit again in 2019 (another $500). Then, in January of 2020, we’ll be in a new calendar year before we hit our next anniversary date. That’s another $500 in credits if we use it right away, before paying a third annual fee at the next account anniversary. We have the Southwest Companion Pass through the end of 2019 – so not only is this easy to use, but we’ll get several trips out of it for this year and next. When 2020 rolls around, we’ll see where we are, but we should be able to get nearly full value out of the $500 credit between the two three of us (no more lap infant by then) that year as well.
  • $1,000 in resort credits. This is covering our seaplane transfers, not including the $60 per person in tax.
  • 4 free weekend nights. We each get a free weekend night this year and we’ll each get one next year. I definitely don’t value these by the cash cost of the room when I never would have considered paying it out of pocket…..but that overwater villa is going for $1,592 per night with tax during our dates….just sayin’.

I don’t know about you, but my calculator puts that together as “more than the $1800 we’re paying”. Even if you only value the airline credits and resort credits at 50% of face value — which I think is way undervaluing them — that would be $1,250 in value from the credits alone. As long as we can get more than $550 in value out of the 4 free weekend nights (that’s $137.50 per night), we’re ahead of the game. The Conrad Maldives has been on our bucket list since we got into this game, so I feel like we were eventually going to pony up that $1,000 for the seaplane transfers — making it pretty darn close to face value for me. Still, I know most astute readers would argue against valuing the resort or airline credits at full face value even if we do end up using them all for trips we would otherwise take. Let’s more realistically (yet still conservatively) value those airline and resort credits at 75% face value: that’s still $1,875 in value. And we’ve still got our 4 weekend night certificates and Diamond status. Any way you run the numbers, it looks pretty good.

Will we actually take this trip?

I really don’t know whether or not we’ll actually take this trip — and that’s why I didn’t fill out the authorization form before writing this post. If we decide to go ahead and do this, I have a lot of time between now and my anniversary date to decide and put down a deposit to trigger this year’s credit. To me, it was more interesting to realize that one doesn’t actually have to stay at a Hilton resort every year to maximize the credit. Rather, if you plan out a resort stay every other year and the resort is willing to take a deposit in advance, you should be able to put together $500 per player towards a Hilton resort every other year. You obviously don’t have to be staying in the Maldives to make that work — perhaps you’d prefer one of the Hilton Disney Springs properties or a resort in the Caribbean, where you may be able to stretch more value out of your credits.

If your plans are set in stone, you could even use this year’s credit to book an advance purchase rate for a property outside the US for something beyond your next annivesary date. For instance, let’s say that your anniversary date is May 6, 2019. Imagine you want to stay at a Hilton property in the Caribbean next May that costs $125 per night. You could simply book 2 nights as a prepaid advance-purchase (say May 10-12) and then 2 nights at the Hilton Honors rate that is paid at the hotel at checkout (May 12-14). Get your $250 credit now for this cardmember year based on the prepaid rate (remember this only works at properties outside the US if you’re using the advance purchase rate). Then get next year’s credit at checkout. Of course, don’t forget to go through a shopping portal or Acorns Found Money or something like that to save even more.

That theoretical example gets you 4 nights out of the resort credit alone and allows you to pile together this year’s credit with next year’s. My point here is this: there are a lot of ways to maximize this; the best way to do it is going to depend on your preferences.

Though I will admit that I’m tempted by the Maldives. As I hunted around a bit more, I found this nugget:

 

a screenshot of a flight registration

I emailed to confirm that Children under 2 are not charged for the seaplane transfer. Somebody tell Mrs. Reyes that going next year is a $250 win :-).

Bottom line

The Hilton Aspire card is hands down my favorite hotel credit card. In this post, I’ve spilled some digital ink on how much value you can get out of it — and I didn’t mention a word about spending money on this card other than to trigger the credits. That’s because regardless of whether or not you spend a dime on the card, I think the benefits are pretty valuable. I think those benefits magnify if you’re in 2-player mode, with a spouse or partner able to double up with you on annual free nights and airline/resort credits. And the best part is that you should be able to maximize your annual resort credits if you just stay at a Hilton resort every other year, as long as your resort will let you make an advance deposit. You’ll pay out a hefty amount in fees, but you’ll get a heck of a return for your money with even just a little effort at maximization.

Note that we do not earn a commission for this card.

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sach

do you actually have to stay at the hotel for it to trigger the credit?

[…] year benefit) by contacting the hotel on which he settles and making an advance deposit (See: Maximize Hilton resort credit without staying every year.). Alternatively, since his honeymoon will be before his subsequent anniversary, he could use wait […]

Trevor

Do you know if the $250 credit would stack with Amex FHR benefits? I am considering booking a night at the Waldorf Astoria in Vegas. When booking via FHR, it gives the option to use a different credit card, and it allows me to apply the Aspire and “pay at hotel”. According to the FHR terms, “Payment must be made in full with an American Express Card in the Platinum Card Member’s or Centurion Member’s name.” On the surface, this does not seem to prohibit using the Aspire card. Any reason to believe this would be a problem? I assume as long as the charge goes through, the $250 Aspire credit should apply. Thanks!

Trevor

Thanks Nick, that’s what I was hoping you would say! I do also have the other Amex offer on my card, thanks for mentioning! Unfortunately, though, I had already added it to my Amex Platinum in anticipation of stacking w/ FHR. At the time I added it, I did not realize I could pay for FHR properties with any card other than the Platinum (perhaps this was a restriction in the past that they have since relaxed?). Thanks again!

Trevor

Just had one more follow up. I booked the FHR stay yesterday, and I selected “Pay at Hotel”. Today my Aspire card had a charge for the total amount of the room, even though my stay isn’t until next week. The charge came from Waldorf Astoria, and when I look at the detail, I can see the Las Vegas address. Is this typical for FHR bookings? Do you think this will cause any problems with receiving the $250 Aspire credit? This is my first time using this credit, and I wasn’t sure how critical it was to pay at the front desk specifically. Thanks again Nick!

Trevor

Many thanks again! Yes, the stay is only for one night. Should be a great stack if all goes well!

Trevor

Just wanted to thank you again. I used this offer on Monday night, and the FHR + $250 credit stacked perfectly! This is amazing value when staying in Vegas, as the hotel night was under $100 all in (with resort fee, after the $250 credit), and that included free breakfast + $125 in resort credit + $50 in diamond credit (I’ve never received this extra $50 credit before, so it was a great surprise). Staying at this hotel for one night was actually net cheaper than not staying an extra night in Vegas. This is amazing value! Thanks again.

Neil

I am visiting my folks who live right near one of the Waldorf Astoria properties listed on the Hilton resort page. Was planning on going to the front desk to see if they sell Hilton gift cards. Anyone know if this would work?

Neil

Thanks, I’ll see if there is anything I can buy at the front desk.

Jennifer Nguyen

For the advance payment to use the $250 resort credit, would Hilton allow you to use 2 different cards under 1 reservation? Since you would need to submit 2 forms; for yourself and then for player 2.

Same idea goes for when you’re checking out of the resort.

ray

dp: i paid 500 advance deposit at conrad maldives and did not get credit. made payment on 4th april and no credit so far. had the 500/100 conrad ao too which didnt trigger either. I am going to be there before my credit resets so didnt call to fight but providing a datapoint.

[…] credit so if you pay for the room in advance you will get the credit. UPDATE – Looks like Nick at Frequent Miler did a similar post in the past and cited Flyertalk DP’s that this only works for overseas […]

Nate

Has this changed recently? If I understand it correctly, you cannot take the credit in 2018 and 2019 (Dec and Jan) Here’s what it reads on the terms: “During each year of your Card Membership (“reward year”), you are eligible to receive up to $250 total in statement credits on your Card Account for eligible purchases made directly with participating Hilton Resorts with your Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card during that reward year. Your first reward year begins on your account opening date. Each subsequent reward year begins on the anniversary of your account opening date. “

Riku

Nick,

Any update on this? I would like to do the same for my trip in 2019 but the award schedule has not released yet. It would be great if you could update on this.

[…] If you have the relatively new Amex Hilton Aspire card, you’d be able to use up this year’s $250 resort credit when staying at the Conrad Maldives. Even if you’re booking an award stay, you’ll still have to pay for food on site and seaplane transfers. As this flight deal is for dates in November and December, it’s unfortunately not possible to double dip both 2018 and 2019 resort credits like Nick recently discovered. […]

veeRob

Hmmmm, seems like no readers are reading between the lines. Or was no reading between the lines intended, Nick? If not, I’m just devious.

Jeffrey Richardson

My wife and I hit this property during our globe circling honeymoon in 2016. You’re correct about the cost of food. We were there five days, and our food costs were around $1,500. Granted, we ate at Ithaa, the underwater restaurant one day, but we took advantage of the gold/diamond free breakfast(huge), 3pm Tea Time, and then the gold/diamond happy hour at 5pm. The lowest cost meal is a $35 Cheeseburger, and things ratchet upwards from there. There’s also a dinner provided for honeymooners. This was an excellent post, Nick. Great call on the workaround for those nasty air transfer fees.

Anastasia

Very nice post, Nick. My issue is that there aren’t that many aspirational Hilton properties for me – I’m not big on Disney or resorts in Florida, and they don’t have too many exciting offerings otherwise. I may pick up this card if we ever get to the Maldives sometime far in the future, but probably not before then.

TKW

I’m always sitting on too many, easy to MS, Barclays Arrival miles to value the airline and resort credit at more than half value.

Dennis Bauer

I already have Hilton Diamond status. Is it still worth it to get the card for me?

NinjaX

nobody can answer that question with all that immense detail you had just provided…

Jamie

I was able to book the water villa when it’s available at 95k pts for my visit later this year. Now that I got the free night award only the beach villa is available for 95k. It seems they can not just replace one weekend night with the free night award while keeping the rest of the reservation (I remember reading somewhere it can be done though). My choice would be to cancel the entire reservation, book one night with the award and the rest with pts for beach villa. Looks like I’ll have to use the free night award somewhere else. Any suggestions?

Dave

Call diamond reservation line. When you cancel rooms should immediately go back into inventory. It did for me and I rebooked with my cert.