Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) is a collection of higher-end boutique-type hotel properties around the world. Through Hilton’s partnership with SLH, you can use Hilton Honors points to book many of these interesting and unique SLH properties. While some SLH properties can cost upwards of $2,000 or more per night (or as many as 250,000 Hilton Honors points per night), there are a surprising handful of SLH properties that can be booked for 40,000 points per night or fewer, at least at some times during the year. Since Hilton often sells points for 0.5c per point, it is possible to buy the points to book a standard room at these hotels for $200 per night or less. Furthermore, after Hilton’s 5th Night Free benefit, a five-night stay could be booked at any of these properties for 160,000 points or fewer, and a good transfer bonus could even make for a good use of Amex points. Note that won’t always be a deal, so it is worth checking cash rates during your desired dates. Still, these hotels represent opportunities for luxury on a budget.
Finding “cheap” luxury
During the planning stages for our coming 100K Vacay Challenge, I initially set my sights on the chance to stretch my budget without compromising quality by seeking out cheap Small Luxury Hotels of the World stays. Knowing that many SLH properties are known for their great service and desirable locations, I figured that focusing entirely on SLH could potentially make for a great strategy.
Given the current point transfer bonus from American Express Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors, it is currently possible to get 2.5 Hilton points for each Amex point. With that bonus, all of the properties in this post could be booked for 6,000 to 16,000 Amex points per night before accounting for a 5th night free (which drops that range to 4.8K to 12.8K per night). Five nights at the most expensive properties on this list will only set you back 64,000 Amex points with that transfer bonus.
To find the properties on this list, I used a combination of regional searches at Hilton.com (searching for hotels in “Europe”, “Asia”, “Central America”, etc) and the map tool (dragging the map a bit between regions to see which properties showed up) and hotel search / alert tool MaxMyPoint.
As noted at the outset, while the points prices at these properties may be low at some times during the year, you’ll still need to check to make sure that you are getting good value per point. MaxMyPoint is an excellent reference to use in this case since it shows at a quick glance the frequency with which award stays are available as well as the range you can expect in terms of cents per point while also calculating the cents per point for specific dates.
Value can vary, so keep your eye out for situations where you are getting better than 0.41 cents per point (our Reasonable Redemption Value for Hilton points).
Note also that Hilton offers dynamic pricing, so keep in mind that the point prices below are the lowest prices at which I found these properties. Surprinsingly, many of them maintain a more statis price throughout the year than many Hilton-branded counterparts, but there is some variance to be expected depending on your dates.
Finally, in a future update, I will expand this post to include properties costing up to 50,000 points as there are many more good values to be had for 45,000 to 50,000 points per night. If you find other properties that should be included within the points bands below, please let us know in the comments. Also, if you have experience staying at any of these properties, let us know your experience in the comments.
20,000 points per night or fewer
- Narendra Bhawan Bikaner, an SLH Hotel (Bikaner, India): 15,000 points per night* (opens May 2026).
- Additional detail: A Member of our Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group recently highlighted this as the cheapest SLH award in the system. It looks very nice and the price is tough to beat, though it is not expected to open until May 2026. With that being more than 8 months away, there is still time for delays to push it back even further.
30,000 points per night or fewer
- LN Hotel Five, an SLH Hotel (Guangzhou, China): 25,000 points per night
- The Majestic Malacca, an SLH Hotel (Malacca, Malaysia): 25,000 points per night
- Angkor Village Hotel, an SLH Hotel (Siem Reap, Cambodia): 30,000 points per night
- This property was added to the list of SLH properties bookable with Hilton points quite recently. It gets excellent reviews and looks beautiful.
- The New Jingli Hotel, an SLH Hotel (Nanjing, China): 30,000 points per night
40,000 points per night or fewer
- Gaya Island Resort, an SLH Hotel (Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia): 35,000 points per night
- Cameron Highlands Resort, an SLH Hotel (Pahang, Malaysia): 35,000 points per night
- O Monot Boutique Hotel, an SLH Hotel (Beirut, Lebanon): 35,000 points per night
- Rimondi Boutique Hotel, an SLH Hotel (Crete, Greece): 38,000 points per night
- This property is more often priced at 43,000 points per night, but it comes in just below 40K during shoulder season / off-season.
- Gran Derby Suite, an SLH Hotel (Barcelona, Spain): 39,000 points per night
- Tanjong Jara Resort, an SLH Hotel (Dungun, Malaysia): 40,000 points per night
- Lakeview Hotel Yulongwan Kunming, an SLH Hotel (Kunming, China): 40,000 points per night
- YiuTeung Mansion, an SLH Hotel (Chengdu, China): 40,000 points per night
- La Miniera Pool Villas Pattaya, an SLH Hotel (Pattaya, Thailand): 40,000 points per night
- MUU BANGKOK HOTEL, an SLH Hotel (Bangkok, Thailand): 40,000 points per night
- Angel Beach Resort, an SLH Hotel (Galle, Sri Lanka): 40,000 points per night
- Grand Palace Hotel, an SLH Hotel (Riga, Latvia): 40,000 points per night
- I very seriously considered this hotel as a stop on my 100K Vacay trip. I am very intrigued by Riga and this property looks like it has a lot of old world charm. Unfortunately, the value per point is typically weak since room rates are often less than $200 per night.
- Villa Soligo, an SLH Hotel ( Farra di Soligo, Italy): 40,000 points per night
- This property also made for a reasonably-priced award when SLH partnered with Hyatt. Some readers stayed and I recall mixed reviews, though it can sometimes be a good value for the price given relative proximity to Treviso and what appears to be a pretty location.
Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.
Enticing post. I was debating visiting Cambodia when we go to Vietnam in February. Clicking on your link to Angkor Village Hotel in Siem Reap was just the motivation I needed. Cambodia it is! Thanks, Nick.
I went to Cambodia last November and loved it! Picturesque, easy to travel in, cheap. (Most places take US dollar notes, too, at a pretty fixed exchange rate, further simplifying things).
I stayed at the La Miniera soon after Hilton acquired SLH properties. Overall, the property is pretty decent except it’s pretty far from central part of Pattaya. Pretty much only thing that is accessible within 10 minutes via walking that is not another resort is a 7-11. Also, I didn’t realize from the pics that the pool is actually INSIDE the unit, which was a first time experience among pool villas. The unit tend to have high humidity and the pool does make maintenance noise. In conclusion, it wasn’t my cup of tea so I doubt I’d ever go back.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania is an awesome combination destination! Went there last year. Stayed at a wonderful Hilton Garden Inn in Lithuania, an architectually challenged Hilton in Riga, and a pretty classic Hilton in Ravel aka Tallinn.
Definately do Riga! Splendid old town and traditional Latvian food in restaurants there.
yea, next time i’m in Latvia
L3 is trying to be helpful. If you can’t appreciate that, don’t even comment.
I have family in Latvia….
Had a stay this summer at The Montenotte Hotel in Cork, Ireland when it was still available at 40K (bumped up to 45K since then).
From a points value perspective it was great – cash prices don’t dip much below $300 (often closer to $400) and they have Triple Rooms consisting of 1 Double and 1 Twin bed bookable as a standard award which are almost always $400+. That meant our family of three could spend a night there without a rollaway bed or room upgrade charge that many other European hotels tacked on to our stays. Cork itself had fairly limited budget hotel options so a lot of lodging came in at $200+ a night.
The common areas of the property look incredible, there is lots of cool artwork in the hallways and a well manicured garden. It is perched up on a hill with great views of the whole city. But unfortunately looks were deceiving for the quality of the stay. We had a busted bath/shower faucet and couldn’t get any cold water in our room, not addressed despite repeated maintenance requests. Toilet wouldn’t flush right half the time, seemed like an internal valve was sticking. The worst quality breakfast out of 6 hotels on our trip. We paid for dinner our one night there with the food again subpar, and our waitress nearly dropped a steak knife on our daughter. And because of the hill it is on it is not very pleasant to try walking anywhere from it.
I really wanted to like the property as the ambience and decor are amazing, but the soft product, food, and utilities were terrible.
“I very seriously considered this hotel as a stop on my 100K Vacay trip.”
Did someone just give away the general area of their trip?
You’ll have to wonder. I did know that I wrote that sentence when I wrote it. And that I (past tense) considered it.
“Cheap” luxury?! Any mention that most of these are on the other side of the planet and will cost you a LOT of money or points to get there?
(Also…don’t let the tail wag the dog: go to a place because you want to go, not because you can get a deal on a hotel stay)
It doesn’t necessarily have to cost a lot of points to get to Europe or Asia (I posted just last week about using 6,000 Virgin Atlantic points and $110 to get to London or 12K and ~$200 to get to India and the week before we reported on Iberia economy class to Europe from just 6,400 points and about $88 one way / 12.8K and less than $300 RT) — and what constitutes “a lot” varies a lot from one person to another. You are indeed correct though that the United States is not known for its low-cost luxury market. Were you surprised that the cheapest SLH properties were not located in the United States?
In terms of “don’t let the tail wag the dog”: I think it is very tempting to assume that our preferences are “right” and everybody who approaches things differently is doing it “wrong”, but I personally think that leads to a narrow view of preferences that, right or wrong, just isn’t highly reflective of reality. You can certainly pick the places you want to go and, regardless of my opinion or yours, others will choose how they want to choose. If they want to choose because they like the beach or because they only want drivable destinations or because they have always wanted to hike Machu Picchu or because there’s an amazing restaurant they want to try or there is a hotel that looks interesting to them, I’m not sure how anyone can proclaim any one of those preferences to be “right” and another to be “wrong”. It certainly may be different than how you’d choose, but some people enjoy checking out unique luxury hotels. Again, that may not appeal to you. That’s fine. Golf appeals to many people. It doesn’t appeal to me. I wouldn’t presume to tell you not to golf just because I don’t find it interesting. You do you!
That said, I’ll share why I disagree with your advice: One of my favorite things about this hobby is that “a deal on a hotel stay” (or on an award flight) has very often influenced where I’ve gone and led me to some of my favorite destinations — places I never would have considered otherwise, but ended up really enjoying. I’m glad that I didn’t ignore those experiences just because they weren’t “where I wanted to go”. Chasing the deal has led to many of my favorite unexpected travel memories. And the ability to generate more miles and points each year means that I don’t feel pressure to check off boxes from a list of “places I want to go”. I know that I can use miles to get to many places and I’m just happy to be exploring — whether on the other side of town or the other side of the world. Am I going to visit every hotel on this list? Definitely not. Would I consider planning a trip that incorporates one of them? Of course I might.
If someone plans a trip around a cheap (mediocre) hotel stay, I think it’s lazy. You only have so much time and energy to spend in this life—don’t do it because the hotel has been tagged “luxury”. Do it because that place has some meaning for you. Be intentional.
Sure, you may decide to go somewhere on a whim and it might turn out to be a good experience. You could throw a dart on a map too and the same may apply.
Anyway, my 2 cents….which I know is contrary to a lot of the thrifty points hounds here.
Looking forward to your next family trip report, where you decide where to go based on the deal.
I’m an advocate for not being a complete slave to points and often go to places with no points option, but I agree with Nick that a deal can increase enticement in a place and lead to great discoveries. I discovered some of my favorite places due to high redemption values.
There are at least 1,000 places I want to visit/revisit. I need something to triage it down to a few places per year. Points value and availability is a big (but not the only) criteria for me.
I discovered Zagreb and Malaysia and Budapest as well as many other places because there was value and opportunity. Those places showed me that there’s no shame in seeing someplace new just because it’s a bargain.
how about some practical locations we can actually use?
No place on there that I don’t want to go to except perhaps Beirut (because of the safety situation, I’d actually like to go there as well).
AGREE.. I’m not interested in going to BFE just because there’s a nice hotel there
Bunny, based on your comments, it seems that you don’t put much into the hobby, don’t want to do your own research, and want to be spoon fed. Are you a Millennial or Gen Z?
Just a hot chick, Jack.
As a heads up, the company (YTL) that manages most of these Malaysian resorts is terrible. They also manage the JW and Ritz in KL, perhaps the worst Ritz in the network. Keep expectations low and don’t expect true luxury.
A correction:
Narendra Bhawan in Bikaner has been open for plenty time. I visited in December 2024, using MMS (Hyatt) gift cards, and it was absolutely wonderful. Everything was perfect from the vibe to the service to the food and drinks
Maybe May 2026 is when it gets integrated into SLH, or has availability.
Oooh, good to know!
Your title references “FHR” properties.
The post is about “SLH” properties.
Yep, fixed. Thank you.
Interesting sweet spot! Think I spotted a small typo:
Very hot in India, and the temperature is often over 30 and feels like an oven.
I did once visit from April into May and can confirm you are correct about that.
Great post! “FHR properties” -> SLH properties?
Correct – Thank you!