Aspirational awards, part 1: Hilton all-inclusive resorts (Americas)

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If you follow the advice in my book and here on the website, hen you know you never need to pay retail for another flight or hotel stay again.  But that doesn't solve the most important question: where do you want to fly for free, and where do you want to stay when you get there?  In this on-going series, we'll take a look at various aspirational hotel and airline redemptions around the world in order to help you make the most of your miles and points.

In today's edition, we'll examine Hilton's all-inclusive resort properties, where you can redeem Hilton HHonors points for stays that included food and beverages, including alcoholic beverages.

Hilton Papagayo Costa Rica Resort & Spa

Vital Information

  • Award night cost: 60,000 HHonors points per night, year round.
  • 5-night stay with 5th night free for elite members: 240,000 HHonors points.
  • Cash price: $1,645 - $2,795 on sample dates.
  • Redemption value: 0.6 - 1.16 cents per point.

 

Getting there

  • merican Airlines operates non-stop service to Liberia, Costa Rica (LIR) on two-cabin aircraft from Miami International Airport (MIA).
  • Delta Airlines operates non-stop service to LIR from their hub in Atlanta, Georgia (ATL).
  • United Airlines operates non-stop service on two-cabin aircraft to LIR from their Texas hub in Houston (IAH) and seasonally from Newark (EWR).
  • US Airways operates occasional weekend flights from Charlotte, North Caroline (CLT) to LIB on two-cabin aircraft.

Hilton Rose Hall Resort & Spa, Jamaica

Vital Information

  • Award night cost: 60,000 points per night, year round.
  • 5-night stay with 5th night free: 240,000 HHonors points.
  • Cash price:  $1,570 - $2,995 on sample dates.
  • Redemption value:  0.65 - 1.2 cents per HHonors point.

Getting There

 

  • American Airlines operates non-stop service to Montego Bay, Jamaica (MBJ) from Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) on two-cabin aircraft.
  • Delta Airlines operates non-stop service to MBJ from their hubs at New York City's JFK and Atlanta.
  • United operates non-stop flights between MBJ and their hub in Houston (IAH) on two-cabin aircraft.
  • US Airways operates non-stop service to MBJ from their hub in Charlotte on two-cabin aircraft.

Hilton Puerto Vallarta Resort, Mexico

 

Vital Information

  • Award night cost: 60,000 points per night, year round.
  • 5-night stay with 5th night free: 240,000 HHonors points.
  • Cash price:  $1,070 - $2,445 on sample dates.
  • Redemption value:  0.44 - 1.01 cents per HHonors point.

Getting There

  • American Airlines operates non-stop flights between Puerto Vallarta Ordaz (PVR) and their hub in DFW.
  • Delta operates non-stop flights between PVR and Los Angeles (LAX) and Atlanta.
  • United operates non-stop flights between PVR and San Francisco (SFO), Houston (IAH), Denver (DEN), Los Angeles (LAX) and Chicago O'hare (ORD).
  • US Airways operates non-stop services between PVD and their hub in Pheonix, Arizona (PHX).

ward Ticket Redemptions

All four of the airlines mentioned here charge the same number of miles for award redemptions to Mexico and to the Caribbean, so award flights between the continental United States and all three of these destinations cost the same number of award miles:

  • American Airlines: 25,000 (off-peak) or 30,000 (peak) AAdvantage miles in economy, 60,000 in business.
  • Delta Airlines: 35,000 Skymiles in economy, 60,000 in business.
  • United Airlines: 35,000 United miles in economy, 60,000 in first.
  • US Airways: 35,000 Dividend Miles in economy, 60,000 in first.

Since these are international flights, they do trigger the stopover and one-way rules that allow you to include free one-ways on award tickets on Delta, United, and American.

ummary

By offering over 1 cent per point in value for 5-night redemptions during high season, the all-inclusive resorts n the Americas provide some of the most valuable redemptions in the Hilton HHonors program.  The Hilton American Express cards (standard and Surpass) and Citi HHonors Reserve card earn 3 HHonors points per dollar in non-bonused spend.  Even though the American Express bonus on drug store spending (6 points instead of 3) is coming to an end for existing cardholders in May, if you're able to manufacture spending at a cost of .78 cents per dollar, you're still able to earn the 240,000 HHonors points needed for a 5-night stay at a cost of $624, saving up to 77% on a 5-night stay at the Papagayo Costa Rica, for example.

Starwood hotel category and cash and points changes now in effect

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As mentioned in my hotel devaluation roundup last week and in Chapter 6 of the book​, the changes to Starwood Preferred Guest's hotel categories and the devaluation of the cash and points award chart went into effect today.  I'll be updating the webpage shortly with my analysis of the new chart [edit 3/6/2013: updated].  In the meantime, you can check out the new award chart on Starwood's website, and use Starwood's tool to view Starwood hotels by award category.

Free one-ways on American award reservations

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We've already discussed the basics of adding a free one-way flight before or after a round-trip award reservation on Delta and on United​.  Free one-ways on American Airlines are a little trickier than on either of the other traditional carriers.  As always, in order to book a free one-way flight, you need to use a stopover.  However, American only allows stopovers on award tickets at the "North American gateway city," which is the airport where you depart or arrive North America.  This post has a list of which cities are considered North American gateway cities with different American partners.

​Therefore, the only way to add a free one-way to the beginning or end of your itinerary is if you live in your North American gateway city, or can get there cheaply or easily.  For example, if you live in Boston, then as long as you depart or arrive North America on a flight from or to Boston, you can add an earlier or later one-way flight at the beginning or end of your reservation.  Below is a simple example.  On the outbound international leg, Boston to London, Boston is the North American gateway city.  That means that I was able to add an unrelated, free one-way flight from Dallas to Boston at the beginning of the itinerary for the same miles as just the international round-trip:

On the return flight I found, Chicago is the North American gateway city, so it would be possible to stopover there if I hadn't used the stopover already at the beginning of the itinerary.  Of course in order to get from Boston to Dallas in the first place you'll need a paid one-way ticket or an award from an airline that allows one-way awards at half the price of a round trip, like United or American.

Which hotel program is best for earning airline miles?

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The most popular hotel loyalty programs all allow you to transfer your hotel loyalty points into airline miles at more or less favorable ratios.  Here are the most favorable transfer ratios available for "pure" point transfers to the 4 traditional domestic airlines: Delta, United, US Airways, and American.  Marriott and Starwood both offer more lucrative awards for both hotel stays and airline miles, which we'll leave for a future post.

Starwood: 20,000 Starpoints to 25,000 airline miles (all except United).  1 : 1.25.

Hyatt: 50,000 Gold Passport points to 25,000 airline miles.  1 : 0.5.

Marriott: 125,000 Marriott Rewards points to 50,000 airline miles (all except American).  1 : 0.4.

Priority Club: 10,000 Priority Club points to 2,000 airline miles.  1 : 0.2.

Club Carlson: 100,000 Gold Points to 18,000 airline miles.  1 : 0.18.

Hilton: 10,000 HHonors points to 850 (US Airways), 1,000 (United or Delta), or 1,500 (American) airline miles.  1 : 0.085, 1 : 0.1 ,or 1 : 0.15.  Below we'll use the American conversion rate as the most favorable of the three conversions.

As you can see, I've ranked these programs in order of the nominal value of their points currency.  But here at the Free-quent Flyer, we're not interested in what the hotel programs think their rewards are worth, we're interested in the rebate value of loyalty programs, and to calculate that we need to know how quickly we can earn earn hotel's rewards currency, in order to redeem it for the award that matters to us (in this case, airline miles).

​With that in mind, let's compare hotel earning rates to their airline miles redemption value.  This looks like a normal points density grid, but with a single award, instead of hotel categories.

Starwood Preferred Guest

​Starwood provides the simplest example of this technique.  Since the points transfer at a 1 : 1.25 ratio to Delta, US Airways, and American, you can see how quickly you earn airline miles depending on your elite status and whether you hold the Starwood American Express card:

Hyatt Gold Passport

Hyatt's points, which transfer to the traditional airlines at a rate of 1 : 0.5, offers a comparable rebate value for non-elite members, although lags behind Starwood for elites using their co-branded credit card:

Marriott Rewards

With Marriott we see our first surprise.  Gold members using the Marriott Rewards Premier ​Visa card earn more airline miles per dollar spent at Marriott properties than even Starwood elites using the co-branded credit card.

Priority Club

With Priority Club the original pattern reasserts itself: these points just aren't very valuable when redeemed for airline miles, not because of the poor conversion rate, but because they can't be earned quickly enough to make up for the poor conversion rate:

Club Carlson

With Club Carlson, first Hyatt, then Starwood are leap-frogged as you move up the elite loyalty ladder.  With the Silver elite status and Club Carlson visa, you can earn 100,000 Club Carlson points, or 18,000 airline miles, after $3226 in spending at Club Carlson properties.  A Hyatt Platinum member with the Hyatt Visa card would have to spend $4115 at Hyatt to earn the same number of miles.  Moving up the elite loyalty ladder, a Club Carlson Gold member with the Premier Visa card (and automatic Gold status) earns 18,000 airline miles after $2500 in Club Carlson spending.  A Starwood elite using the Starwood co-branded American Express would have to spend $2880 at Starwood to earn the same number of miles.

Hilton HHonors

​Unfortunately the Hilton loyalty program doesn't have any surprises with respect to airline transfers.  While there are good values at the lower end and middle of the Hilton hotel redemption chart, it's always a terrible value to transfer your Hilton points to any of their transfer partners.  Even using the slightly more favorable transfer rate to American Airlines, a Hilton Diamond Elite using the American Express Surpass card would have to spend $6,172 at Hilton properties in order to convert their points to just 25,000 American Airlines miles.  compare that to a Starwood elite using their co-branded American Express, who would have to spend just $4000 at Starwood properties to earn the same number of miles.

[Expiring] Advanced techniques for manufacturing spend

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Update 3/6/2013: ​as first reported in this thread, beginning May 1, 2013 the Wells Fargo Prepaid card will only be loadable using Wells Fargo credit and debit cards, preventing the hack described in this post:

wells fargo load change.png

Original post:​

The first thing every reader should do once they take a serious interest in travel hacking is make sure every possible purchase is charged to a points- or mile-earning credit card.

Once you've established that base level of spending, you can consider more advanced techniques like using Kiva or Amazon Payments to "manufacture" points-earning purchases.​

Today I'll explain one of the most advanced methods for manufacturing spend, with a twist that makes it even more lucrative.  Here's what you'll need:

​It's possible to load your Bluebird account directly with Vanilla Reload Network Prepaid Reload cards.  These cards can be purchases in denominations of up to $500, with a flat fee of $3.95.  Since you can use the money immediately to pay off your credit card, or any other bill, this allows you to manufacture spend at a cost of $0.0078 (.78 cents) per dollar in manufactured spending (3.95/503.95).  This is a great value, especially if you're using a card that earns bonus points on purchases at drug stores like CVS, where Prepaid Reload cards are often sold.

However, by taking a slightly more circuitous route, you can drive down your cost per point even further.  The Wells Fargo Prepaid card allows you to load up to $2500 per load at a cost of $5, and a total of $4500 per rolling 30-day period (one $2500 load and one $2000 load).

Here's where the advanced technique comes into play.  Normally you can only earn rewards from the initial charge to a rewards-earning credit card.  However, a PayPal account and linked PayPal debit MasterCard allow you to earn rewards for both loading and unloading the card.  Here's how: many stores that sell Vanilla Reload Network Prepaid Reload cards also sell similar, PayPal-branded reload cards, known as "My Cash" cards.  You can earn your normal credit card rewards by purchasing these cards, which have the same cost structure as Prepaid Reload cards ($3.95 for loads up to $500).  However, once the money is loaded into your PayPal account, you can then use your linked PayPal debit MasterCard to load your Wells Fargo Prepaid card and earn 1% cash back on each transaction.

Once the money is loaded to your Wells Fargo Prepaid card, you can load the funds onto your Bluebird card as a debit transaction at any Walmart and use the funds to pay off your credit card.  Note that the Wells Fargo card has a transaction limit of $600, and the Bluebird allows debit loads up to $1000 per day, so you'll need to make two $500 loads per day.  

Let's compare the beginner and advanced techniques:

Beginner technique: Prepaid Reload card to Bluebird

  • Buy a $500 Prepaid Reload card at a cost of $3.95;
  • Load $500 Prepaid Reload to Bluebird;
  • Pay bills with Bluebird's bill pay service, or withdraw to a bank account;
  • Total spend generated: $503.95.  Total cost: $3.95.  Cost per dollar: $0.0078.

Advanced technique: PayPal My Cash to PayPal to Wells Fargo to Bluebird

  • Buy four $500 PayPal My Cash cards at a cost of $15.80;
  • Load four $500 My Cash cards to PayPal;
  • ​Load $2,000 to Wells Fargo Prepaid at a cost of $5, earning $20.05 cash back;
  • Load $2,000 to Bluebird for free at Walmart (in four transactions on two separate days);​
  • Pay bills with Bluebird's bill pay service, or withdraw to a bank account.​
  • Total spend generated: ​$2015.80.  Total cost: $0.75 ($20.80 in fees minus $20.05 cash back).  Cost per dollar: $0.0003 (.03 cents per dollar in manufactured spend).

​If you're interested in trying this technique, keep the following in mind:

  • PayPal allows up to $500 per day in My Cash loads, and up to $4,000 per calendar month;
  • Wells Fargo allows up to $2500 in loads within 24 hours, $3500 within 15 days, and $4500 within 30 days.  Thus to maximize this card you should load $2000 per load, 16 days apart, at a cost of $5 per load; ​
  • If you have money in your Wells Fargo Prepaid account on your monthly statement date, Wells Fargo will charge a $3 monthly fee, which will raise your cost per point (in the above example, it would raise it to .18 cents per dollar in spend).  If your account is empty, most reports are that the fee is not charged.​

Happy hacking!​

​

Free one-ways on United award reservations

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Round-trip United award reservations allow 2 open jaws and 1 stopover.  As we saw when booking free one-ways on round-trip Delta award reservations, we need to use one stopover and one open jaw to book a free one-way: the stopover in our origin city, then the open jaw to the destination of our free one-way flight.  You can use the other open jaw however you like.

Fortunately, United's booking engine actually works, unlike Delta's, so you can price out and book a free one-way ticket simply and easily online.​  Here's a sample search for Chicago (a United hub) to Frankfurt (a Lufthansa hub), plus a free one-way flight to San Francisco at the end:

Notice that our later trip to San Francisco has nothing to do with the original roundtrip itinerary to Frankfurt.  It's a month later.  But sure enough, this prices out in Business Class just like a roundtrip without the one-way flight to San Francisco: 100,000 miles plus taxes and fees.

"True" credit card earning rates

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Nothing's ever simple in the world of loyalty programs, and that's doubly true f credit card rewards.  While most cards seem to offer a straightforward earning structure of 1 point per dollar, in fact that number can be somewhat higher because of bonuses that accrue either annually or at certain high levels of spending.  If you don't take those bonuses into account, you're not correctly evaluating the earning rate of your rewards credit cards.

Today we'll take a look at several popular rewards-earning credit cards nd compute the true earning rate on each.

Chase Sapphire Preferred

The Sapphire Preferred is a good example of a card with a "hidden" bonus.  Every calendar year (not cardmember year) in early January you're awarded a 7% bonus on all the Ultimate Rewards point you earned the previous calendar year.  This means that on unbonused spending, you earn a total of 1.07 Ultimate Rewards points per dollar, and on bonused spending (travel and restaurants) you earn a total of 2.14 points per dollar.

After the first year of card membership, the Sapphir Preferred has an annual fee of $95.  Valuing Ultimate Rewards points at 1 cent each (their cash redemption value; much higher value can be realized by redeeming them for travel or transferring them to airline, hotel, and rail partners), the first $9,500 you spend on the card each year only earns you enough points to pay your annual fee.  Taking into account the 7% annual bonus, however, you earn enough Ultimate Rewards points to pay the annual fee after only $8,879 in spending, a fairly low amount if you're manufacturing spend.

United MileagePlus Explorer

The MileagePlus Explorer card earns 1 mile per dollar on most spending.  However, if you spend $25,000 in any calendar year on the card, you earn an additional 10,000 bonus miles.  This makes the true earning rate on the card 1.4 miles per dollar, if you are able to spend exactly $25,000.  This card is essentially only worth spending any money on (after meeting the minimum spending required by the bonus you signed up for) if you intend to spend exactly $25,000, since the Sapphire Preferred has the same annual fee and allows transfers to United, while also allowing you to redeem your points for cash, travel, or transfers to other travel partners.

Platinum Delta American Express

Like the nited MileagePlus Explorer, the Platinum Delta card gives a bonus of 10,000 redeemable miles after spending $25,000 on the card in any calendar year.  However, along with the bonus redeemable miles, it also awards 10,000 valuable Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM), which can make a huge difference when qualifying for elite status.  Unlike the MileagePlus Explorer, the Platinum Delta card awards another 10,000 redeemable miles and 10,000 MQM at $50,000 in calendar year spending.

Most travel hackers who carry the Platinum Delta Amex therefore attempt to spend exactly $25,000 or $50,000 on the card each calendar year.  t those levels of spending, the card earns 1.4 miles per dollar, plus 10,000 or 20,000 valuable MQM.

Reserve Delta American Express

The Reserve card has a similar earning structure to the Platinum card, except instead of earning 10,000 mile bonuses at $25,000 and $50,000, the card earns 15,000 bonus miles and MQM after $30,000 and $60,000 in spending.

At those evels of spending, the Reserve card earns 1.5 miles per dollar, plus 15,000 or 30,000 MQM.

 

American Express Premier Rewards Gold

The Premier Rewards Gold card earns 1 flexible Membership Rewards point per dollar on ost spending.  At $30,000 in calendar year spending, the card earns an additional 15,000 Membership Rewards points.  If you are able to spend exactly $30,000 on the card, then you'll earn a total of 1.5 points per dollar.

Bank of America Virgin Atlantic Credit Card

The Virgin Atlantic card has a quite complicated earning structure.  On most purchases, the card earns 1.5 miles per dollar spent.  Then at $15,000 in purchases per cardmember year (not calendar year, like with the American Express cards), on the card anniversary, the card also awards 7,500 miles if you reached $15,000 in spend and another 7,500 if you reached $25,000 in spend.  However, you must renew the card for an additional year in order to receive the miles (unless you are able to cancel the card after the miles post and have the annual fee waived).  So the true earning rate of this card is 2 miles per dollar if you spend exactly $15,000 and 2.1 miles per dollar if you spend exactly $25,000 each year of card membership.  Since these miles transfer at a 1:2 ratio to Hilton HHonors points, this is like earning 4.2 HHonors points on all purchases, slightly better than the fee-free Hilton American Express card.  However, since the Virgin Atlantic card has a $90 annual fee, you would have to value the marginal 30,000 Hilton HHonors points at over .3 cents each in order to justify paying the annual fee each year and claiming the anniversary bonus.  

he card is probably not worth getting just for the 20,000 miles signup bonus, since the annual fee is not waived the first year

Barclaycard Arrival World MasterCard

The Arrival World MasterCard earns 2 points per dollar spent on the card, and each point can be redeemed for 1 cent towards travel purchases ade with the card.  However, the card also gives a 10% rebate on all redemptions, meaning you earn approximately 2.22 cents for each dollar spent on the card.  I say "approximately," since when you redeem points received from the 10% point rebate, you'll receive another 10% rebate on those points, ad infinitum.  Thus if you redeem 100,000 points you'll receive a 10,000 point rebate, and when you redeem those points you'll receive another 1,000 point rebate, then a 10 point rebate, then a 1 point rebate.  Add it up and  $50,000 in spending earns 111,111 points ($1111.11 towards travel redemptions), a 2.22 point per dollar earning rate, which gives it a slight earning advantage over the 2% cash rebate Fidelity Investment Rewards cards.  However, the Arrival World MasterCard has a $89 annual fee after the first year of card membership.  To pay for that annual fee with the marginal earning advantage, you'd need to spend $40,050 on the MasterCard!  In other words, after the first year only spending above $40,000 is more lucrative than the Fidelity 2% cash back cards, which is probably unrealistic unless you have high business expenses you can charge to the card, or enough spare cash to consider aggressively making Kiva loans with the card.

 

However, the annual fee is waived the first year, so thanks to its competitive earning rate this is a good card to consider including in a credit card application cycle, as long as you're sure to cancel it before you pay the annual fee for the second year.

[Confirmed] Potentially huge change coming to Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan

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As discussed in Chapter 6 of the book, Alaska Airlines can be a valuable frequent flyer program for crediting miles flown on their non-alliance partners Delta and American Airlines, especially if you don't anticipate flying on either airline enough to earn elite status.

​Well, according to this thread, that value might be about to get a lot better.  So far this is just a rumor, but a number of people have apparently been told the same thing by Alaska phone agents: you will soon be able to redeem Mileage Plan miles for one-way partner awards on Delta and American.

​Why is this a game-changer?  First of all, Delta award availability is notoriously bad, and if you're booking award flights using Delta Skymiles (or, currently, with Alaska miles), you have to book your outbound and return legs at the same time, which means both legs must have award availability.  The consolation prize is that you can book a free one-way at the beginning or ending of your round-trip award.

If Alaska Mileage Plan miles can be used to book one-way awards on Delta, then you can book each leg as award space becomes available.  ​No more waiting for low-level availability on both legs to be available simultaneously.  This would make Alaska Mileage Plan miles much more valuable for Delta award flights than Delta's own program, assuming Delta continues to require round-trip bookings when you redeem Skymiles.

The second reason this is potentially a major game-changer is that by making Alaska miles so much more valuable, it also increases the value of Starwood Preferred Guest Starpoints.  Starwood points can be transferred to Mileage Plan miles at a 1:1 ratio with a 5,000 mile bonus at 20,000, 40,000, and 60,000 ​Starpoints (so 60,000 Starpoints become 75,000 Mileage Plan miles).  Keep in mind that these transfers are not instant, so you will need to plan ahead if going this route.

The rumored date for this change to go into effect is March 17, 2013.  ​If it ends up being true, I'll be recommending to all my friends and clients who are casual flyers to start crediting their Delta flights to Alaska.  Additionally, Starwood points, already one of the best hotel award currencies for low- and mid-tier properties, are about to get a lot more valuable!

Hotel loyalty program devaluation roundup

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Now that the last hotel programs have announced the changes to their loyalty programs for 2013, we can survey the landscape and see which programs lost value and which retained it (it would be too much to ask for a loyalty program to gain value).  

​As we'll see, the programs that changed the least were Starwood and Hyatt, which adjusted the award redemption categories of a number of their properties, but maintained the same basic earning and redemption structure (although Starwood Points and Cash redemptions got more expensive, as previously announced).

Almost all the other hotel loyalty programs underwent drastic devaluations.  We'll look at each program in turn.​  As each program's changes goes into effect, I'll update the point density analysis you can find on my page discussing Chapter 6 of the book in more detail.  All these loyalty programs allow award reservations for dates after the category changes at the old redemption level, as long as the reservations are made before the effective date. 

Hyatt Gold Passport

Effective date: February 7, 2013.​

Hyatt's loyalty program underwent almost no changes this year.  Only 17 hotels changed redemption category, and 10 of those ​moved to lower categories, costing fewer points.  You can find the list of all 17 properties on this Hyatt webpage.

Starwood Preferred Guest

Effective date: March 5, 2013.​

As of March 5, 2013, the new Cash & Points redemption rates will go into effect (read more about those new rates here).  Additionally, Starwood has announced a preliminary list of hotels that are changing categories, moving either up or down in the cost of both free nights and Cash & Points redemptions.  You can find that list in this pdf file.

Marriott Rewards

Effective date: May 16, 2013.​

Marriott is introducing a new hotel category, Category 9, which will cost 45,000 Marriott Rewards points and will initially have the following hotels:​

  • Boston Marriott Long Wharf
  • Le Merigot, A JW Marriott Beach Hotel & Spa, Santa Monica
  • London Marriott Hotel County Hall
  • London Marriott Hotel Grosvenor Square
  • Grosvenor House, A JW Marriott Hotel
  • London Marriott Hotel Park Lane
  • JW Marriott Essex House
  • New York Marriott Marquis
  • Paris Marriott Hotel Champs-Elysees
  • St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel
  • Renaissance New York Hotel Times Square
  • Renaissance Paris Vendome Hotel
  • Renaissance Paris Arc de Triomphe Hotel

This pdf has a list of all the Marriott properties that are changing at least one category in 2013.​

Here's my updated analysis of the rebate value of Marriott stays for different combinations of elite status and cardholder status:

Hilton HHonors

Effective date: March 28, 2013.​

Hilton is radically changing their loyalty program by adding 3 new award redemption tiers, ​introducing seasonal pricing, and changing the current elite discounts on award stays of 4 or more nights into a more straightforward 5th night free on award reservations.  It's widely assumed that after March 28 they will also change the current discounts on stays of four nights for Hilton American Express cardholders, which I discussed in this post.

The new award chart will look like this:​

And here's the updated point density analysis:​

"Seasonal pricing" is Hilton's new way of charging a different number of points for hotels within the same category.  However, many have been quick to point out that at Hilton's aspirational properties, for example the Conrad Hong Kong, the supposedly "high season" pricing is in fact in effect year-round (80,000 points at the Conrad Hong Kong, for example).  That's a long season!

Finally, ​elites will no longer receive the variable discount they currently receive on longer award stays.  As I wrote earlier this week:

Elite members of the Hilton HHonors program receive a discount on stays of 4 or more nights at Category 3-7 hotels.  The discount is 15% of the points required for a 4-night stay, 20% of on a 5-night stay, and 25% of on a 6-or-more night stays.

After March 28, elites will instead receive every 5th night free on award reservations, up to 4 free nights on award reservations of 20 consecutive ​nights.