American Express launched a new transfer bonus today, giving a 25% boost when transferring your Membership Rewards to your Hilton Honors account. Given the seemingly reduced value of Hilton points recently though, this bonus is less appealing than in the past.
The Deal
- Get a 25% bonus when transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors.
Key Terms
- Expires September 23, 2025.
Quick Thoughts
Amex normally transfers to Hilton on a 1:2 basis, so this 25% bonus increases that ratio to 1:2.5.
If you’re not aware of the value of Hilton points, that could sound very tempting seeing as most Amex travel partners get transferred to on a 1:1 ratio. However, unless you’ll be getting outsized value from the transfer, it might be worth passing on this opportunity.
In the past, I never tended to have a problem getting at least 0.5 cents per point of value from Hilton points; sometimes increasing to 1 cent per point even for non-luxury stays by taking advantage of Hilton’s 5th night free benefit on award stays for those with Silver status or higher.
Over the past 12-18 months though, I’ve increasingly found that Hilton seems to want more and more points, even when room rates aren’t particularly expensive. The data seems to bear that out too. We used to have the Reasonable Redemption Value of Hilton points pegged at 0.48 cents per point, but when Tim researched the data based on more than 3 million Hilton award searches last month, that value got adjusted down to 0.41 cents per point. Many people already valued Hilton points at 0.4 cents per point anyway, but that drop of almost 15% gives an indication that finding good value has gotten harder over the last year or two.
If you too value Hilton points at 0.4 cents per point, transferring Membership Rewards on a 1:2.5 basis means you’d be expecting to get 1 cent per point of value which isn’t a great redemption for your Membership Rewards. That’s not to say that you can’t get good value from a Hilton transfer by September 23; just that it’s usually easier to get better value by transferring to an Amex airline partner instead.
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Great post. Thanks for the guidance. Im assuming SUBs on Hilton cards are the only way to get points for Hilton you would recommend? Every other way to accumulate Hilton points opportunity cost isn’t worth it.
In the right situation, buying them can be worth it. Hilton often sells its points for 0.5 cents per point; that’s not worth it if you’d be redeeming for less than 0.5cpp, or even for just over 0.5cpp seeing as on a paid stay you’d be earning points too. If you’d be getting, say, 0.6cpp of value or better by redeeming points and the points are on sale for less than that, buying them could be the way to go.
I should also mention that putting spend on some Hilton cards could be worth it too depending on what other cards you have. For example, the Surpass card earns 6x at U.S. restaurants, U.S. supermarkets, and U.S. gas stations, plus you can earn a free night certificate after $15k of spend in a calendar year. If you did all that $15k spend in 6x categories, you’d earn 90k bonus points as well as a free night certificate, so that’s another option for getting more Hilton points.
Awesome, thank you Stephen
Smh I transferred a day ago…just my luck.