Originally Posted by
craigthemif
"Devaluation" is the headline, but that's not necessarily the truth. Dynamic pricing is essentially designed to charge more points when the room rate increases. And if hotels are charging $500 per night, then award costs are going to be 100,000+. You don't call it a "devaluation" (of the dollar essentially) if a hotel charges $600 instead of $500, you call it inflation or price-gouging or whatever.
What would actually be a "devaluation" would be if Hilton tweaked the algorithm so that Honors points are worth 0.38 cents instead of 0.42 cents (or whatever the actual numbers are). But thanks to dynamic pricing, that's almost impossible to know. But the only thing that is noticed is the top-end caps being increased.
Hilton couldn't give a monkeys about the cash rate though, because (unless the hotel is full) the amount it pays for a reward is in the management contract - usually $50 or so.
The other thing people forget is how system funds work. Hilton is not allowed to profit from the loyalty scheme. The hotels pay money in from every say, the hotels get money back via redemptions and marketing. It's far more likely that Lando Norris's success and the increased cost of funding F1 etc is the reason for these changes.
The real issue is when (as Marriott has publicly stated it is doing) you cut the % fee charged to owners for loyalty / marketing to encourage more hotels to join you. You're struggling then because there is far less money in the pot.