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This morning, Hilton Honors has announced a much more extensive launch of the booking of Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH) properties through the Hilton Honors platform. While this doesn’t include all SLH properties worldwide, there are many, many hotels available today that were not available yesterday. As expected based on what we reported in April, all of the participating SLH properties I’ve searched have standard rooms available to be booked with points or free night certificates (though keep in mind that availability at many of these small properties can be limited). If you have points or free night certificates, many of these properties offer outstanding value for either.
As a reminder, Hilton has slowly launched availability for some SLH properties over the past few months, with a test phase in the first half of June, a further expansion toward the end of June, and now this larger rollout of almost 400 total properties with much wider availability than in previous phases.
I’m personally very excited about the Hilton / SLH partnership given my past positive experiences with SLH. I’m glad to see numerous properties that offer excellent value now available. I’m also glad to see that Hilton Honors elite benefits, including continental breakfast for up to two guests, will be honored. As expected, you’ll pay no resort fees and get the 5th standard reward night free. From the press release:
Hilton Honors members can elevate their stay at participating SLH hotels with exclusive benefits, including earning and redeeming Points, free WiFi and a guaranteed member discount. Gold and Diamond members also enjoy space-available room upgrades and continental breakfast for up to two guests. Hilton Honors members will appreciate the continued flexibility and value of the award-winning program, including benefits like Points & Money payment options, no resort fees on stays booked using all Points and 5th Standard Reward Night Free.
I was personally incredibly excited about a planned stay last year at Nanuku Resort in Fiji. The place looks lovely and according to the hotel’s website, “Every child under the age of six has a dedicated nanny to attend to their care from 9am until 6pm daily.” — and that’s complimentary during those hours. Children aged 6 to 12 have the choice to be paired with a buddy for activities. Unfortunately, I had to cancel that trip when my son got sick on the way to the airport. However, I found availability through Hillton Honors next spring for a standard room, which is the Nanuku Suite, for 100,000 points per night. The cash rate must be something of a mistake (as are the premium room rewards here no doubt) as the cash rates look like they start at more than $400,000 per night. It’s a luxury resort, but based on the cash rates when I had looked before I don’t think that’s a typical price. Still, it’s a nice value for free night certificates for sure.
I didn’t end up booking Nanuku Resort yet, but it will surely be on my mind as we collect more free night certificates.
I was sad not to see my beloved Grand Hotel Victoria available for the dates I’d like, but I wasn’t surprised to have difficulty finding availability given the fact that I think they only have a few “standard” rooms. I know that many SLH properties are quite small (some have as few as 10-20 total rooms).
One frustration at the moment is that many properties aren’t showing definitive availability in search results. They might be available. Definitely, maybe.
Unfortunately, for now, you’re just going to have to click through on individual properties to see whether they are or are not available.
It can certainly be worth clicking through to check. Greg loved his stay at Eichardt’s Private Hotel in Queenstown, New Zealand — and despite it saying “maybe available” in search results, when I clicked through I found that it was indeed available. I almost backed out of it thinking that only premium rooms were available, but then my eye caught the fact that Hilton is listing the Heritage Suite, which is not the cheapest room from a cash perspective, as the “standard” room.
While 130,000 Hilton points is a steep price from an award perspective, the Hilton Honors discount rate for that night is $1,678.61. That would make for an outstanding use of a Hilton Free Night Certificate! It’s also a great deal for anyone buying points since, when Hilton is selling points for half a cent per point (as they are right now), one could buy the points for a night for a thousand bucks per night less than the going cash rate!
Again, keep in mind that a property like Eichardt’s Private Hotel only has (I believe) a total of 11 rooms including all room categories, so don’t be surprised if you have some difficulty finding a date when one of just a couple of potential award rooms is available. That was true when SLH partnered with Hyatt and I imagine that things won’t be any easier given the fact that Hilton has far more members.
Update: Search via the Hilton Honors app. You may notice that the screen shots above all came from the app because that’s where I was searching as I typed this post. It wasn’t until well after publication that I realized that some of the same properties I’d booked were showing no availability on desktop. I’m seeing many properties available in the app that show no availability via the desktop flexible rate calendar. Keep in mind that many might show “Maybe available” initially — click through and some of them (maybe many of them?) are available.
Still, if you’re sitting on points or free night certificates right now, I recommend jumping on some reservations. Do check the cancellation policies — while I booked one that had a policy of 2pm 48 hours before arrival, I’ve seen some with deadlines further out (like Eichardt’s Private Hotel, which I believe has a 30-day cancellation window).
Keep in mind that not all SLH properties participate in the Hilton Honors program. That was also true when SLH partnered with Hyatt. According to the Hilton press release, “390 SLH properties have opted to join into the partnership with more hotels expected to be added as the SLH and Hilton relationship grows.” I expect that there are some properties that may never opt in to the partnership, but hopefully we’ll continue to see the partnership expand.
Overall, I’m very excited to see the partnership with SLH flourish. We’ve burned through most of our household Hilton points and free night certificates this morning booking some places that look like they’ll make for great stays. While I’ve long been unenthusiastic about the prospect of transferring Amex Membership Rewards points to Hilton, this new partnership will have me considering it to top off for a few more reservations at great value.
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Is there an official full list of SLH properties that will be integrated into Hilton?
Others have asked whether the properties (at least some of them) would be classified as resorts and qualify for the Aspire credit. I’ve wondered the same for using Hilton gift cards on-site. I assume the answer is no, but I’d love to be surprised.
Looking forward to all your report after your SLH-hilton stays.
Just booked a four night stay at the Hermitage Bay in Antigua in a Beachfront Suite. Retail cost over $13k. Hyatt who??? Hilton is king for the day!
what dates? haven’t seen any availability
March 21-25. Just booked a second room for March 21-26 using points. Looks like they have two room types and one room per category before they go to premium rates.
Beachfront suites for both reservations? Checked across multiple dates and only seeing seaview garden suites
Beachfront for the first and Seaview for the second. from what I can tell, they offer one room in each type as standard. When I booked the Beachfront, the only remaining room type was Seaview.
I just booked it for next week. I assume it will be all inclusive even though the points rate didn’t specifically mention it like the other rates. I’ll try using the Aspire card to see if Resort Credits come off as well as if it codes as a Hilton to determine the amount of points per dollar. Will fill you guys in when return
Not sure I agree with the value prop here. Before SLH left Hyatt, I booked 2 rooms at the Tokyo Station Hotel (~$800 usd/night) for 30k Hyatt points each, so about 2.7 cpp.
For the same date, Hilton wants 398,000 pts per night, for a redemption value of 0.2 cpp.
I imagine there will be many examples like this. ☹️
At 398k pts per night you didn’t find standard award availability. Nor are the baselines for CPPs for Hyatt and Hilton in the same stratosphere.
As Riley says, 398K points per night isn’t a standard room (which is what had to have been available to book for 30K Hyatt points), so you’re comparing a premium room awards (which it is well established are a bad value with Hilton points) to a standard room cost in a program that has points that are broadly worth 3-4 times as much.
There’s not really any sense in comparing Hyatt to Hilton in this case (although we have done that sort of comparison before: https://frequentmiler.com/hilton-vs-hyatt/).
The core point to understand is that Hilton points are generally worth about 0.5cpp compared to room rates. Most of these SLH properties cost 95,000 to 130,000 points per night for a standard room award — and in most cases that represents around 1cpp or more, which is double the value you get from an average Hilton redemption. I booked rooms going for over $1200 per night at two different SLH properties (one of which yielded just under 1cpp and the other just over).
And that much aside, the Hilton Aspire card comes with an annual free night certificate. For a $550 annual fee, you get that free night certificate *plus* relatively easy to use airline reimbursements and also Hilton resort credits. The current welcome bonuses on the Surpass and no-annual-fee Hilton credit card now include a free night certificate and you have the ability to spend toward one on the Surpass card. If you then use those certificates at a place that would otherwise cost $1,000 a night or more, that’s a pretty phenomenal deal.
Obviously that’s not everyone’s jam, but the bottom line is that many of the SLH properties offer great value for Hilton points. Premium room awards continue to be a terrible use of Hilton points, but that has nothing to do with SLH — that’s true at almost any Hilton property almost any time with very, very, very, very rare exception.
I should also add that I booked a junior suite at one SLH property today where the nightly rate was $1,680 for that room, but it was available as a standard room award for 110,000 points. You could either buy those points right now for $550 (saving more than a thousand dollars) or use a free night certificate (I did) and that would be a great deal.
Unfortunately, standard Vs. premium is not the explanation to the situation at The Tokyo Station Hotel.
I got the standard room rewards under Hyatt, which is the Dome Side King/Twin, of ~30 sqm — which makes sense — as Dome Side rooms are the smallest at that hotel, every other room is 40 sqm+.
Now under Hilton, Dome Side rooms are 359,000 points, even more than the 40-sqm City View rooms, which goes for 340,000 points.
What that tells me is every room at that hotels is now a premium room, even their smallest ones.
Curious to find out how many other SLH hotels now fall into this category.
It seems a few of the SLH properties are classified as resorts. Would be interesting to see if the Hilton Aspire resort credit works at these locations!
You beat me to it!
It seems at least in Europe, this expands the use of your Aspire Free Night certificates and/or the Resort credit! Yay!
Hi Nick, we (family with a young child) spent 4 nights at Nanuku in 2023 and had a wonderful time. Hot tip – rent a car. Anything booked through Nanuku (transport, tours) is heavily marked up. The price of our rental car for 5 days was cheaper than just the airport transfer. This allowed us to eat off-resort (Nanuku’s food is mediocre and expensive), access cheaper tours off-resort, and do a couple drive-based day trips. Fiji was also very easy driving, if you can handle the left side driving thing. Second tip, travel beyond Vitu Levu. We spent a week at an eco resort on Kadavu and the experience was really incomparably better than Nanuku.
Thank you! We didn’t actually book it (not enough points and FNC for all the bookings we wanted to make!), but all good to know. For the last trip (that we had to cancel), I had also booked a rental car for 5 days and as you said it was cheaper than just the airport transfer. All good info!
Is Nanuku Resort bookable yet? I searched on App but it’s all sold out for any dates.
nvm, saw your reply and screenshot.. I will just keep eye on the property
Checked Nanuku on both desktop and the app, and there are zero nights available for the next 2 years for any length of stay…. Nice to have this resort on the Hilton list, but it’s fairly pointless if they aren’t going to load a single night for the next 24 months.
I mean, I literally showed a screen shot of it available in the post – they obviously *did* load availability.
I 100% understand the frustration of having difficulty finding availability. At the same time, that’s not surprising given that some of these resorts only have 2-3 rooms available for redemption and Hilton has millions of members.
There was space ~5 hours ago when I published this post. Apparently, it’s gone. I’d keep an eye on it as this is the type of property with a long cancellation window and it’s the kind of place where people probably booked speculatively, so if you keep your eye on it in the coming months, you may get lucky.
Thanks, Nick. This all makes sense. I think some of these properties are struggling under the weight of being connected to hilton.com…
Nanuku is also showing no availability for *paid* stays as well for as far out as I searched. That’s obviously not accurate unless a Saudi prince is moving in there permanently and occupying all the rooms for the next 2 years. It doesn’t say “Maybe Available” – simply “Sold Out” for paid or award stays of any length. I’m sure this will get fixed at some point.
I just spent better part of an hour searching a half dozen properties in North America, Caribbean and Europe for availability and didn’t find a single award night for the next 2 YEARS. I’m not sure where this magical award space you’re finding is, but it’s not at the vast majority of the properties unless I’m doing something wrong.
I mostly searched in Europe and found a bunch of them available, though as the hours roll on I won’t be surprised if it gets harder to find them. I don’t know whether the flexible date calendar is working (I imagine maybe not since many of the properties said “maybe available” on initial search), so you may need to search specific dates (which is what I was doing).
Flexible date calendar does not appear to be working. You have to pick certain dates and pick a region and I think you have a better result.
Hot tip: *Use the app*. Just booked 3 rooms at the Grand Hotel Victoria, which wasn’t available this AM, and found another place that said no rooms available on desktop that was available in the app. Going to update the post, but commenting here first.
Is there a list somewhere of all the SLH-Hilton locations?
Pick a region and then indicate under brands that you want SLH. A cinch.