American Express Membership Rewards is currently offering a 25% transfer bonus when you transfer points to Hilton.
The Deal
- American Express Membership Rewards is offering a 25% bonus when you transfer points to Hilton Honors.
- Ordinarily, the transfer ratio is 1,000 Membership Rewards points to 2,000 Hilton Honors points. With the bonus, 1,000 Membership Rewards points becomes 2,500 Hilton Honors points.
Terms and Conditions
- Redeem for this exclusive offer from 12:00 a.m MT on 2/14/2025 to 11:59 p.m MT on 3/14/2025, to receive 25% additional Hilton Honors Bonus Points.
- Please allow up to eight weeks for the additional Hilton Honors Bonus Points to be awarded.
- Hilton Honors Bonus Points do not count towards elite tier qualification.
Quick Thoughts
In the past, we’ve been lukewarm on Hilton transfers since the program frequently sells points for just 0.5 cent each – that’s not great value for Membership Rewards points. Even if you’re redeeming for a hotel that costs $1,000 per night, a transfer from Amex is only saving you the cost of purchasing the points at 0.5 cents each, not the cost of the cash rate.
For instance, if you transfer 100,000 Membership Rewards points to get 250,000 Hilton points, it makes more sense to consider the value as the cost to purchase that quantity of points ($1,250 when on sale, which happens frequently) rather than the cost of the room for which you redeem. In other words, you’re getting around 1.25c per point with the bonus – which is neither incredible nor terrible.
That said, there are limits as to the number of points you can purchase per year and if you’re primarily focused on keeping cash in your pocket, moving points to Hilton with a transfer bonus can be reasonable enough. We like Hilton Honors points even more now than in recent years given the partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) combined with the ability to use points for standard rooms and get a 5th night free when redeeming points.
Given all that, if you have a specific near-term use in mind, a transfer bonus like this could be appealing.
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With 5th night free, the cost of that room drops considerably. Of course that savings applies to transferred points as well as purchased points so you don’t gain anything on an Amex transfer relative to buying points, but it’s still an excellent stack. With a 25% bonus, a 100k HH per night room (say, Conrad Tokyo) comes out to 160k Membership Rewards over 5 nights, which is 32k MR per night. A Hyatt equivalent (say, Park Hyatt Tokyo) will run 40k per night with no transfer bonus or 5th night free.
The 1st sentence says 30% bonus