It was all going so well.
At the start of the year, all of us on the Frequent Miler team were pretty bullish about Hilton, despite an increase in award pricing at the end of 2024 at some properties. With the SLH partnership in 2024, hundreds of attractive-looking properties around the world had become bookable with Hilton Honors points, opening up all kinds of aspirational redemption options.
Many of those were already on the pricey end of things when they joined – as were some other Hilton hotels – but some of their prices jumped significantly back in May to up to 200,000 points per night.
Well, it’s only been four months since that devaluation at the top end and Hilton is disappointingly at it again. The most expensive standard room awards now top out at 250,000 points per night. Ouch.
One of the worst examples of the devaluation is the Waldorf Astoria Los Cabos Pedregal. When Tim wrote a review of the property just two years ago, standard room awards were “only” 120,000 points per night. In December 2024 that rose to 140,000. In May 2025 those got jacked up to 190,000 points per night. As of yesterday, this hotel is now charging a whopping 250,000 points per night – more than twice the redemption requirement less than a year ago..
That’s not the only hotel charging that many points. Another highly rated Waldorf Astoria property is the one in the Maldives. In April 2025, if you could find standard availability it would cost you 150,000 points per night. The following month that was boosted up to 200,000 points per night. That’s now at 250,000 points per night too.
An almost equally bad devaluation is Calala Island. In 2024, it was bookable for 120,000 points per night. That subsequently increased to 150,000 and then up to 200,000. It now stands at 240,000 points per night if you can find much-desired availability.
Also exceeding 200,000 points per night is Canaves Oia Suites in Greece. If you want to book a stay there using points, it’ll now cost you 228,000 Hilton Honors points per night.
This is all incredibly disappointing for anyone wanting to book award stays using points at the top end hotels in Hilton’s portfolio (and partnered portfolio). Hilton offers every 5th night free on award stays if you have Silver status or above. Even taking advantage of that benefit means that a five night stay at some hotels will now cost a ludicrous one million points.
At the moment, it looks like it’s still possible to redeem Hilton free night certificates at the properties now charging more than 200,000 points. Given these now-frequent devaluations, it wouldn’t be surprising if Hilton places a cap on these certificates at some point. Fingers crossed that’s just unfounded pessimism though.
It’s strange that Hilton’s decided to implement two devaluations in such quick succession, particularly seeing as many of the hotels that went up in price back in May 2025 were also affected by this latest increase. I guess the original increase didn’t have the intended effect and they figure that they can get even more points out of people who are willing to redeem such a substantial stash of them.
With increasingly absurd award pricing and points that are becoming worth less across the entire portfolio, the good will that Hilton had generated over the past year or so is rapidly ebbing.
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I can’t believe that HHonors points are now worth less than IHG points.
What a disgrace!
On Sunday I made 1.8 million points worth of redemptions, it would have cost me an extra 600,000 if I had waited a couple more days!
While nobody likes a devaluation, I have 35 nights booked at WA Punta Calcique, Tabacon, WA Wailea, Calala Island, and Grand Hotel Victoria over the next 9 months. If this is the cost of Amex NLLs and points transfers, I’ll take it! Keep the points parade coming!
Any chance this helps availability at sought after properties?
To think I almost made a speculative transfer for a trip I may or may not have taken. Good riddance
Earn and burn. Citi TYP transfer partners looking better everyday.
Hope few Hilton execs are paying attention to blog posts like this, and the comments from readers as well. Because now they can see that Hilton Honors program is in deep trouble. The only thing that was keeping it afloat was Amex Cards, but after continuous diminishing value of Hilton points – the program will certainly be going to the dumpster for most users.
Overall most properties pumped both cash and point rates after COVID-19 receded, but Hilton keep inflating rates every 6 months, which is unsustainable and non-competitive across the board. Once extra points from past years’ Amex offers dry up – Hilton will be sitting sorry with not much loyalists left, and deeply reduced cash flow. But it would be too late, they ruined themselves!
You overestimate our importance. The vast majority of their revenue comes from non-hobbyists who don’t know and don’t care. Management knows this and will do what they’re going to do. They will continue on this path unless and until they see the revenue needle move.
I’m also noticing that “standard room” awards can be priced much more dynamically, at least some of the time, than they used to. On a popular weekend in Omaha, a Home2 is 120,000 points/night for a standard room (versus 35,000 – 50,000 normally.)
At this point loyalty really doesn’t seem worth it – better to just use a booking portal of some sort and pay for any benefits you care about.
Can you share more details on this (which hotel and which dates)? I just checked the calendar for the Home2s in Omaha and I’m not seeing any dates with standard rooms over 50k.
I will preface this by saying that I am planning on canceling (downgrading to $0 AF) my Aspire and broadening domestic limited service stays to Marriott and IHG (stacked with Rakuten, AAA rates, and card offers – none of which often help at Hiltons). However, I am looking at a 10 night stay in Tokyo next year on points. My plan was to do the Conrad Tokyo which was 800k for the 10 nights and is now 1.04M. My observation is just that is still a competitive points price against other similar properties offered by Marriott or Hyatt in the city based on earning rates and point purchasing costs. I wouldn’t be surprised if things were similar in cities like London, Paris, and New York where Bonvoy redemptions per night has surpassed Hilton with a significantly lower potential earn rate and a higher point purchase price. Loyalty is done, choose the best rate/location/property and take cash back whenever you can, but comparing in those limited circumstances I am still finding value in Hilton *compared to the other major points programs.*
I’ve looked at all the usual Hilton properties that I stay at for frequent travel and ones i hope to travel to in the near future.
In almost all of them I feel like it doesn’t make sense to buy hilton points anymore for 50% off. Seems like all of them are now past the point redemption rate, where even if i buy points at 50% off, the cash price is cheaper.
If Hilton caps FNCs, it’s game over. I’ve been Diamond for 7 years.
Obviously years of Amex/Hilton pumping out amazing welcome offers (and Hilton NLL offers) and that combined with amazing SLH redemptions really was never going to last. These properties are also probably tired of 23 year old point bros showing up with their JBL speaker and Big Gulp Cup to the pool with their family.
It’s sad how great Hilton was going, as they quickly becoming one of the best hotel systems, and now they are going back down with Marriott and maybe even worse than Marriott.The race to the bottom is unreal
Everyone is focusing on the changes at the top end (for good reason) but I’m wondering if anyone has any data on the whether and how much lower level hotels were impacted?
The last FM RRV review for Hilton showed that the redemption values were all very tightly clustered, so it seems like this could just be an effort to bring the redemptions at the top end properties down to be in line with the ~0.4cpp values of all the other redemptions.
I am increasingly looking at the Hilton program essentially exclusively as a program for FNCs – at least at the top end. And as long as Hilton continues to make it reasonably easy to get several of those per year and they continue to be good for all standard rooms, then there’s still a good amount of value in the program. And then maybe I use all the points that I pick up while earning the FNCs at lower level properties.
The thread on this devaluation on FlyerTalk has tables for various properites before/after comparison.
It is not just the aspirational properties. Curio Collection London Trafalgar Square went from 80K to 105K in one year. Conrad St James Park from 80K to 100K. Hilton FNCs are just less valuable now because unless you have multiple FNCs that is more or less synced, you need to use point redemption to compliment FNC for more nights.
Buying Hilton points when they are on sale is no longer an attractive option. I’m still keeping the 4 Aspire cards P2 and I have because the free night certificates are even more valuable now. I will close both of our Surpass cards because the opportunity cost of spending $15K annually on those cards is inferior than generating Hyatt points with Chase/Bilt cards or Choice Points with Citi. The hotel portals at Amex are even more attractive now too if the FHR credit goes to $300 biannually. Also, I may be tempted to keep my Strata Elite card because the $300 annual credit at mid-tier properties that participate in that program is a decent option. The days of 5 days point redemptions for us at Waldorf Astoria, Conrad and SLH properties is a thing of the past though. P2 and I will string together a couple of FNC for “weekend” trips only at aspirational HH/SLH properties going forward.
No point in keeping my Amex cards now!