It's a devaluation for almost all hotels. You have to hand it to Hilton -- their marketing on this was pretty darned good.

Their pitch was that hotels would never go above the cap. But, of course, the problem with that was that many hotels depending on the time of year often priced below the cap.

The "devaluation" here is that on 2/28, there were millions of hotel nights that priced less than the cap, but now many of those nights have jumped up closer to the cap.

And the reason that it's such an obvious devaluation is that the only time this won't be the case is precisely those times you'd not want to use points anyway.

Is it true that some properties will go down in points? Sure. For a dirt cheap night at a hotel that used to have a minimum number of points you can now beat that minimum maybe. But only in a case where again, you never would have used your points in the first place because cash was a better deal.

The caps remain for now, and you can still get good value by redeeming where the cap price is far lower than the cash price. But for everything else, to say this is not a devaluation is just another insulting use of market speak.