How to maximize your Hilton cards (with upgrades and downgrades)

The SLH partnership allows for the opportunity to get incredible value for Hilton points as compared to cash rates, with an array of drool-worthy (and eye-wateringly priced) properties that often provide well over 1 cent per point value – double our Reasonable Redemption Value for Hilton points of 0.48 cents each. In addition, Hilton’s fifth night free benefit on award stays is applicable to SLH properties AND you can use Hilton free night certificates as well, especially valuable given that many properties price out at 120k-150k points per night.

While the addition of SLH to Hilton Honors has been incredibly exciting, it’s also created a problem for even the most committed Hilton point hoarder: we suddenly need more Hilton points (and free night certs).

Generating points with Hilton credit cards

American Express’ Hilton credit cards are a great option to generate Hilton points and happen to have some especially delectable welcome offers available for the next couple of days. These cards still don’t have the soul-sucking “family rules” that permeate the rest of Amex’s portfolio, so it’s very easy to get all four, which would provide a a lot of dry Hilton powder for very little spend.

But what then?

Hilton only allows you to get the new member welcome offer on a card every five to seven years or so, because of its “once-in-a-lifetime” language. There are card offers that surface occasionally which don’t have those terms (no-lifetime-language, or NLL offers), but they are almost always somewhat targeted and aren’t dependably frequent.

The Hilton Surpass and Hilton Aspire cards are one of the few hotel credit cards that can be rewarding for ongoing spend, by virtue of their 6x/7x bonus categories and free night certificates at $15k and $30k of annual spend, respectively. However, things can get even more appealing. By using product upgrades (Surpass to Aspire) and downgrades (Aspire to Surpass), you can essentially combine the best features of each card in order to get a fairly significant Hilton Haul.

In this post, we’ll map out how (and why) to use product changes to squeeze every drop of potential goodness out of your Hilton cards.

Key Card Details

For more card information, see our dedicated card pages by clicking the names of the cards below.

Card Offer and Details

Hilton Honors American Express Surpass® Card ⓘ $577 1st Yr Value Estimate 130K points ⓘ Affiliate 130K points after $3K spend within the first 6 months. Terms apply. $150 Annual Fee After clicking through, be sure to select the card you want on the next page. Recent better offer: (Expired 7/31/24) 130K points + free night certificate after $3K spend within the first 6 months. FM Mini Review: Easy way to secure Hilton Gold status (which offers free breakfast among other perks). Those who want Diamond status may be better off with the Aspire card. Earning rate: ✦ 12X Hilton spend ✦ 6X U.S. restaurants, US Supermarkets, and US gas stations ✦ 4X U.S. Online Retail Purchases ✦ 3X on all other eligible purchases Base: 3X (1.44%) Dine: 6X (2.88%) Gas: 6X (2.88%) Grocery: 6X (2.88%) Shop: 4X (1.92%) Brand: 12X (5.76%) Card Info: Amex Credit Card issued by Amex. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: ✦ Free night award after $15K spend in calendar year ✦ Diamond elite status with $40K calendar year spend ✦ Terms apply Noteworthy perks: Free Gold status. Diamond status w/ $40K spend. ✦ Up to $200 in Hilton credits ($50 per quarter) ✦ Terms Apply. (Rates & Fees) See also: Hilton Amex Cards. Everything you need to know. Learn more or apply

Card Offer and Details

Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card ⓘ $1016 1st Yr Value Estimate Limited Time Offer: 150K Points + free night certificate ⓘ Friend-Referral 150K after $6K spend in first 6 months. Free night certificate every year - first certificate is awarded 8-12 weeks after approval. Terms apply. $550 Annual Fee After clicking through, be sure to select the card you want on the next page. Information about this card has been collected independently by Frequent Miler. The issuer did not provide the details, nor is it responsible for their accuracy. FM Mini Review: This card is loaded with valuable perks that are more than worth the card's annual fee if you stay in Hilton resorts at least twice per year. Earning rate: ✦ 14X Hilton spend ✦ 7X US restaurants, flights booked directly with airlines or amextravel.com, select car rental companies ✦ 3X on all other eligible purchases ✦ Terms & Limitations Apply. Base: 3X (1.44%) Travel: 7X (3.36%) Dine: 7X (3.36%) Brand: 14X (6.72%) Card Info: Amex Credit Card issued by Amex. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: Additional free night awards after $30K and $60K spend in calendar year Noteworthy perks: ✦Annual Free Night Reward every year upon renewal ✦ Free Diamond Status ✦ Up to $400 Hilton Resort Credit per calendar year ($200 semi-annually) ✦ $200 Flight Credit ($50 per quarter for purchases directly with airlines or via Amex Travel) ✦ $199 CLEAR (R) Plus fee credit per calendar year ✦ $100 on-property credit w/ Aspire Card package ✦ Terms Apply. See Rates & Fees See also: Amex Hilton Aspire In-Depth Review Learn more or apply

Making spend on Hilton cards rewarding

First off, let’s look at the key benefits for each card that we want to maximize:

• Hilton Surpass
  • Spending categories: 6x on US dining, US fuel and US grocery; 3x everywhere else
  • Annual free night certificate (FNC) after $15K spend within calendar year (valid for standard room awards up to 150K points/night)
  • $50 credit towards Hilton charges each calendar quarter
• Hilton Aspire
  • Spending categories: 7x on US dining, flights and car rentals; 3x everywhere else
  • Annual FNC after $30K spend within calendar year
  • $50 credit towards flights each calendar quarter
  • $200 credit towards Hilton resorts twice per calendar year (Jan- Jun and Jul – Dec)
  • Annual FNC awarded ~8 weeks after renewal at the end of the cardmember year

Ideally, what we want to do is capture as many of these credits as we can, put as much spend as possible in bonus categories and get as many of those sexy free night certificates as possible.

Note that, while the Aspire card’s top bonus categories are 7x, my assumption is that dining/flights/cars will end up being less rewarding for most folks than the Surpass’ dining/fuel/grocery, despite the lower 6x earning.

Things to know about product-changing Hilton cards

Let’s start with a few things to know about how upgrades and downgrades are treated between the two Hilton cards:

• Don’t upgrade or downgrade to either of these cards if you haven’t had them before, as it will make you unable to get a welcome offer on that card in the future by virtue of Amex’s “once-in-a-lifetime rule.”
• Spending on one card will continue to apply towards the free night certificate on the second card after a product change. If I spend $15K to get the certificate for the Surpass and then upgrade to the Aspire, that $15K will apply towards the $30K threshold on the Aspire for the remainder of the calendar year. The (somewhat surprising) reverse has also been true thus far: spending $30k on the Aspire and then downgrading will automatically trigger the $15K free night on the Surpass…although this might be unintentional on Amex’s part, so YMMV.
• When you product change a card, Amex pro-rates the annual fee of card you’re changing from and the card you’re changing to. For example, if you product changed from the Surpass to Aspire mid-year, you would get a ~$75 refund from the Surpass annual fee ($150) and pay ~$275 for the 1/2 year of the Aspire card’s annual fee ($550). The total cost for the year would be ~$350.
• As long you didn’t accept an upgrade offer with points involved, Amex doesn’t require that you keep the newly upgraded/downgraded card for any length of time before product-changing it or cancelling.
• If you started with a brand new Aspire or Surpass card with a welcome offer, you’ll want (or have) to wait a year before upgrading/downgrading. Banks are prevented from upgrading you to a more expensive card within the first 12 months and, while downgrading is technically possible, it can put the points from your welcome offer at risk of claw back.

A Hilton Card Almanac

Let’s chart out an example of a possible year in the life of a Hilton card. Keep in mind that both credits and spending towards the free night certificates are based on the calendar year. In contrast, the Aspire’s annual anniversary free night is awarded at the end of the cardmember year, so we need to make sure that it’s an Aspire before each anniversary hits (in order to capture the cert). Our hypothetical card is starting out as a Surpass and has an anniversary date of 1/15.

Year 1: January – March

• • Use $50 Hilton credit
  • Start spending towards $15K certificate, concentrating as much of it as possible in 6x categories
    • • Quarterly earnings: (assuming $7,500 spent at 6x) – $50 Hilton, 45,000 Hilton Honors points.

Year 1: April – June

• • Use $50 Hilton credit
  • Finish spending towards $15K FNC (and any additional spending you want to do in Surpass categories towards the Aspire $30K FNC).
  • Product-change to Aspire after FNC spend reached and acknowledged by Amex
  • Use $50 flight credit
  • Use $200 resort credit
    • Quarterly earnings: (assuming $7,500 spent at 6x) – $50 Hilton, $50 flight, $200 Hilton resort, 45,000 Hilton Honors points, 1 FNC

Year 1: July – September

• • Use $50 flight credit
  • Use $200 resort credit
  • Start spending towards $30K certificate, concentrating as much of it as possible in 7x categories. For Aspire spend, we’re going to call it an average of 5, assuming that most folks would be doing half the spend at 3x.
    • Quarterly earnings: (assuming $7,000 spent at 5x) – $50 flight, $200 Hilton resort, 35,000 Hilton Honors points

Year 1: October – December

• • Use $50 flight credit
  • Finish spending towards $30K certificate, concentrating as much of it as possible in 7x categories.
    • Quarterly earnings: (assuming $8,000 spent at 5x) – $50 flight, 40,000 Hilton Honors points, 1 FNC

Year 2: January – March

• • Use $50 flight credit
  • Use $200 resort credit
  • Once anniversary certificate awarded, downgrade back to Surpass
  • Use $50 Hilton credit and start spending towards $15K certificate
    • • Quarterly earnings: (not including points from spend or Surpass Hilton credit) – $50 flight, $200 resort, 1 FNC.

First year summary

After one year, our total spend is $30K and we’ll have paid ~$350 in annual fees (6 months of $150 Surpass + 6 months of $550 Aspire).

Our total earnings would be $100 in Hilton credits, $200 in flight credits, $600 in resort credits, 165,000 Hilton Honors points and 3 free night certificates. We value the credits at 75% of face value, the points at 0.48 cents each and the free night certificates at ~$500 each. Using those numbers, we’re getting a total of around $3,000 in value from our $30,000 in spend, or around a 9% “return” once we factor in the annual fees.

That’s pretty good – but there’s actually another option with an even higher rate of return.

A (better?) budget option

$30,000 is a lot of money to spend on one card in a year, regardless of what you get for it. Even folks who use various techniques to increase credit card spend may find it daunting, especially when factoring in leaving room for new card welcome offers as well. However, the basic process above could be used while only doing $15K spend on the Surpass for the first free night certificate…and in some ways, it’s actually a better option.

Let’s say that we did the $15K spend on the Surpass and then waited until early Q4 to upgrade to the Aspire card. You can double-dip the Aspire credits at the end of the first year and beginning of the second, then take advantage of the free night at anniversary and then downgrade back to the Surpass.

After one year, total spend is $15K and we’ll have paid ~$250 in annual fees (9 months of $150 Surpass + 3 months of $550 Aspire).

Our total earnings would be $200 in Hilton credits, $100 in flight credits, $400 in resort credits, 90,000 Hilton Honors points and 2 free night certificates. Using the same valuations listed above, we’re getting a total of ~$2,000 in value from our $15,000 in spend, or around 11-12% return when taking into account the annual fee.

This would probably be the better option for most people, as it requires less spend while providing better return. That said, it also requires a much tighter timeline for burning through all those Aspire credits, so we’d need to have our Hilton ducks in a row once the product-change happens.

Other variations

Depending on where you find it easiest to rack up credit card spend, it may be more rewarding to do more or less spend on the Surpass. Since the spend is cumulative towards the free night certificates, there’s no reason that you couldn’t spend almost the entire $30K on the Surpass in 6x categories, then upgrade to the Aspire to get the FNC.

If you could only manage 5x or less with the blended average of the Aspire’s 7x categories and 3x everywhere, that extra $15k on the Surpass could give you can extra 15K+ points when compared to doing that spend on the Aspire (and would also lower the blended annual fee).

Conversely, if you absolutely kill it with the Aspire’s 7x categories, it might be worth it to do the entire second year’s $30K spend on that. It would look like this:

• $15K spend on the Surpass then downgrade mid-year one = 90,000 points and one FNC
• $15K spend on the Aspire end of year one = 105,000 points and two FNC (one from spend, one from anniversary
• $30K spend on the Aspire year two = 210,000 points and one FNC
• downgrade to Surpass to trigger FNC, then back up before the anniversary for the renewal cert.

If you went this route, after two years and $60K in spend you’d end up with 405,000 Hilton Honors points and six free night certificates. Admittedly, there’s a very small percentage of the folks reading this that could manage $45K spend over two years in dining, flights and rental cars. Still, that’s a pretty remarkable two-year haul from credit card spend alone.

Bottom Line

Just to be perfectly clear, anyone who has not already received welcome offers on both the Hilton Surpass and Aspire cards shouldn’t be product-changing. I also would be hesitant to recommend that folks take significant spending capacity away from new card welcome offers in order to concentrate it here.

However, for those with the capacity to manage the spend and who have already worked through the various Hilton products, regular product-changing can be a terrific way to create consistent piles of Hilton points and free night certificates at a rate of return that’s very competitive with other cards in terms of a place to put ongoing spend.

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