Originally Posted by
iahphx
My primary hotel loyalty strategy is to have points in all the programs to take advantage of the "oddities": the hotels that are under-priced on points for one reason or another. While Honors new system seems a bit confusing, it also seems like you can almost never get outsized value from the program. The effective elimination of cash & money ends one of the few worthwhile "oddities" in the Honors program, and now you can no longer find the odd "underpriced" hotel (like the La Quinta Embassy Suites in season, that had room rates north of $350, but went for only 30,000 points). Now, it seems taht in almost all circumstances, if the property is cheap in dollar terms, it will be cheap in points terms. And the reverse seems mostly true as well. If that's the case, why do I want to hold Hilton's currency? It would seem like I don't. So I guess I won't be doing anything like putting my supermarket spending on my Honors Surpass card. I would think that even a 2% cash card would be more valuable for this spending, given the much greater flexibility of cash.
Currently, there is a maximum amount of points that Hilton can charge for any given hotel based on the category the hotel was before the devaluation/enhancement. It is only a matter of time before the old category classification disappears entirely and points will be precisely worth .5 cents for all redemptions. This creates a great deal of predictability for the consumer, on the one hand. You know what your points are worth at all hotels at all times. On the other hand, you are right, all of the sweet spots disappear from the Honors program. The question everyone needs to answer is .5 cents enough to keep you loyal to Hilton.