Hilton Gift Cards can be difficult (but not impossible) to use. Here are some tips for success.

Buying Hilton Gift Cards had been so popular in recent times that the BuyHiltonGiftCards.com website had to suspend sales. Sadly, using Hilton Gift Cards has been far less popular. We’ve received numerous reports over the last year ranging from partial failure (only part of the gift card balance working) to complete and utter failure (being totally unable to use them at all). To be fair, we’ve also received some reports from people who have been able to use them exactly as expected without any issue at all. This post is meant to alert readers to the problem(s) and some thoughts on potential solutions.

BuyHiltonGiftCards has suspended sales

For starters, it’s worth mentioning that you can’t currently buy a Hilton gift card, so this post is most relevant to those who already purchased and have gift cards in-hand. I expect that by the time the ability to purchase gift cards is restored, they will either be less attractive to buy or they’ll have trained staff on how to deal with them. Time will tell.

I had personally ordered Hilton Gift Cards a number of times last year, including in December, so I have a small stack of gift cards that I figured I would eventually use on a stay where I just split tender and use them all at once. As it turns out, that may not be as easy as it sounds.

Hilton Gift Card failures

As noted in the intro, we’ve repeatedly heard from readers who have run into issues redeeming Hilton Gift Cards. Typically, reports on using Hilton gift cards have fallen into one of the following situations:

• Partial failure: Some amount on the card (~15% I believe) has been held / unavailable for use. For instance, I think people with $50 gift cards were initially reporting that around $7 was blocked so that a ~$43 charge would work, but not a charge for the full $50. A running theory I’d heard here was that perhaps some properties had a Merchant Classification Code (MCC) that looked like a restaurant, where some amount of the gift card was being held presumably because of the way tipping works. My education guess is that some desk agents try to switch the payment method associated with your stay to the gift card and that forces an automatic hold for incidentals, whereas they should be setting it up as simply a $50 payment toward the folio (or whatever it is you have on your gift card). Reports were that when the ~15% gets held, the hold took weeks to release the ~$7.
• Complete failure: Some have reported that one card after another was declined and/or that a front desk agent claimed that the property doesn’t take gift cards. Some have wondered whether it is true that certain properties just can’t process gift cards.
• Seamless success: While there have been a lot of reports of partial or complete failure, we’ve also had some reports from readers who have said that gift cards worked exactly as expected and that they were able to split tender and use multiple without issue.

One member of our Facebook group noted that they had no problem using the gift cards in places like New York City and Chicago at properties where he guessed that staff was probably very accustomed to seeing gift cards. I had similarly expected that there was likely some sort of training issue at play and that high-traffic properties in places like New York likely see these often whereas a roadside Hilton Garden Inn might rarely see gift cards and staff may be unfamiliar with how to properly redeem them. I based that assumption at least partially on my experiences using Marriott gift cards. When staying at a Marriott and attempting to use gift cards, I almost always stop at the front desk well ahead of checkout — sometimes even the night before — because front desk agents rarely ever seem to know how to process them and it usually takes a manager calling someone else to figure out how to do it.

However, after spending some time digging around to read data points in our Facebook group and on Flyertalk in threads like this one and this one, I think there are a couple of workarounds that are likely to work in many (if not all) situations. I should note that many (most?) people have reported failure when trying to use gift cards internationally, though I saw a couple of positive data points on using them in Japan and in Mexico, so I’m not convinced that location matters are much as how the charge is processed.

Try simply using Hilton Gift Cards like a credit card

Hilton gift cards differ from typical merchant gift cards in that Hilton gift cards are issued by Amex and have a card number, expiration date, and CVV that looks like an Amex credit card rather than the “code & PIN” system that exists on most traditional merchant gift cards. One would assume that Hilton gift cards are actually Amex gift cards that are simply limited to being used at properties using a qualifying (Hilton-associated) MCC (Merchant Classification Code).

I’ve seen quite a few success reports when simply referring to the gift card as a credit card rather than a gift card. For instance, if you have a couple of $50 Amex Hilton Gift Cards, you might simply say that you’d like to put $50 each on two different credit cards, not mentioning the words “gift card” at all. Simply allow the front desk agent to input the charge amount for $50 and then just swipe your gift card like a credit card and process it as though it is a credit card. There are quite a lot of successful data points on using the full gift card amount when simply making sure that the charge is run like a credit card rather than like a “gift card”.

A few people report being told by desk agents that Hilton hasn’t sold gift cards for years, which leads me to believe that Hilton probably had the “code & PIN” style merchant gift card at some point before switching to Amex-issued cards and probably still has a mechanism in the computer system to accept those that still exist. I might bet that at least some failure data points are due to a desk agent selecting “gift card” on the computer and trying to process the card incorrectly.

That said, given the number of failure data points that exist on the whole, I’m not sure that this solution will work every single time.

Try adding your Hilton Gift Card to Apple Pay

In the comments on a post about Hilton Gift Cards at Doctor of Credit, numerous readers report success in adding Hilton Gift Cards to to Apple Pay and then, just as above, processing the charge for the full amount on the gift card by telling an agent that they’d like to pay $50 (for example) toward their bill and tapping their phone to use Apple Pay.

This solution appears to have a very high rate of success. I don’t think I’ve seen a single failure data point when trying to use the card for a Hilton charge using Apple Pay. If you’re an Apple user, this seems likely to work.

Unfortunately for Android users, I was not able to add any of my Hilton Gift Cards to Google Pay. The initial checks seemed to indicate that the card would be eligible, but during the final step of the process, my Google Pay throws an error every time stating the card cannot be added to tap-to-pay.

That said, I’m not positive whether Hilton gift cards simply can’t be added to Google Pay on the whole or whether my gift cards just don’t work (more on that in the next section).

However, either way, the rate of success with Apple Pay indicates to me that it is very likely that the issue is primarily making sure that the employee sets up the charge to run as credit rather than as a “gift card”.

It might be that some cards are more likely to work than others

According to some data points, the expiration date listed on your gift card might make the difference here.

At least a couple of commenters have indicated that gift cards with an expiration date in 2031 have worked seamlessly in situations where gift cards with an expiration date of 2033 have not.

During my last round of gift card purchases, I ordered one of each of the gift card designs available hoping that there may be a design more likely to work.

Unfortunately, all of the gift cards they’ve shipped me over the last year feature expiration dates in 2033….and none of them worked when I tried to add them to Google Pay.

Personally, I doubt that this is it, particularly since complaints about being unable to use Hilton gift cards stretch back years. I think it is much more likely that some employees don’t know that the proper way to run a Hilton gift cards.

Hopefully Amex and Hilton will fix this

Whether this is primarily a training issue or there’s an issue with some gift cards, I really hope that Amex and Hilton figure out how to fix this. As it stands, gift cards can sometimes be incredibly frustrating to try to use. I know that I’d be hesitant to book a stay where the intention to use the gift cards makes a difference in the hotel I choose. I have a few hundred dollars in Hilton Gift Cards and wouldn’t want to book a place that costs three or four hundred bucks only to be unable to use my gift cards and then be out of pocket for another three or four hundred bucks to pay the hotel.

One commenter at Flyertalk summed it up well:

It sure would be nice if Amex and Hilton could figure this out. I have several but will not buy any more unless it is.

I can’t imagine my embarrassment if i actually gave one as…a gift.

It’s been years, why is this so hard?

No kidding! I’m hesitant to book a stay that hinges on being able to use the gift cards — the thought of giving them to someone (who presumably doesn’t scroll the comments on Flyertalk and Doctor of Credit) as a gift seems almost comically bad. That really needs fixing.

In the meantime, be prepared to run into difficulty using your own Hilton Gift Cards and pleasantly surprised if they sail through without issue using the tips above. If you have additional data points to share that might be useful for others, please share them in the comments.

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