holtju2

Very weak. No reason to have any Hilton stays on the 3rd quarter.

divemistressofthedark

I'm assuming you mean 'if you have no Hilton or airline credit card.' Are we including VIP status? You can get Silver after only four stays, and it's a 15% bonus...

uastarflyer

My take: I set my preference to be points+points and let it sit that way. The other way you're left paying for hotel stays (or using priceline and losing out on the benefits of gold or diamond).

Award flight tickets are easy to earn just by flying. Hotel reward nights take much longer to earn by sleeping. And reward nights should be utilized judiciously, but when they are, it can be so worth it.

My ah-ha moment was sometime during my free 1 week stay at Hilton ADT in Paris, a stay I would have had to pay close to $5K inclusive of breakfast and taxes, that instead I got for absolutely free. And I earned it largely through stays at Hampton Inns and credit card spending.

I'd suggest you follow your FT handle and keep it simple. Keep accumulating the points. They don't expire like WN credits, and it's very easy to make up an excuse to use them some day.

OMMV.

divemistressofthedark

Ditto, only mine was London - six nights of £350 rooms (US$500) free. I also generally stick with points and points, to hoard up for GLONP....but I've already made it for 2010 so am thinking about a switch to Points + Miles...

travelinfoo

+1 ^

I used my points at the Cavalieri right before change to W-A (& resulting point increase). Imperial Lounge access was still given to Diamonds. I had to force some of the nights. Total cost would have been about $4800. My best use of points!

With Diamond status, it is easier to get award nights than trying to get a free/upgraded airline seat, even w/status. I have thousands of miles in one account that I have difficulty using, not for lack of trying. The seats on the flights I want always seem to be gone, even 330 days out!

serfty

No reason? Other than being a HHonors Gold where I have guaranteed complimentary breakfast when I stay at Hilton hotels. ^

FWIW, I just racked up my 16th Stay this year and my 4th Q3FN has posted.

The first three from Q1 are already pinned to the wall for Rome Cavilleri in September; just have 364 days to find a nice use for #4.

Seriously, do you think such a bonus as a free night after 4 stays/10 nights can continue to be proffered? Think what travelling First Class Domestically with most legacy airline flights is like these days when compared with that of 20-30 years ago.

sdsearch

It depends.

I find award tickets on Southwest are a lot easier to earn with partner activity (because of the minimum 0.5 credit -- 1/32 of a domestic free flight -- earning increment). The equivalent of that would be earning 781.25 miles per one-night stay at a cheap Hampton (and on my own dime, usually Hamptons are all I can afford), while Hampton gives only 100 miles per stay at other airlines. So I can see if you're not a Southwest collector that you might feel that earning award tickets is easier with flying, but for some of us who collect Southwest it's not the case. (And especially not when we want Southwest rewards, but want to fly other airlines on paid trips to maintain status or whatever!)

Meanwhile, hotel rewards only take longer if you don't follow bonuses (from hotel family to hotel family). I'm not sure what's so hard about a free stay for every 4 paid stays (the current HHonors promo, though obviously it doesn't sound like the 3rd quarter HHonors promo). Meanwhile, over at Priority Club, during the summer, you can earn 15k bonus points on 7 stays PLUS double points on all those stays. And (though capped in many cases), there are lots of "stay 2 get 1 free" promos at several other hotel families this summer. Etc, etc. Earning "flat" and big bonus points (or free stay certs) on hotel stays so dwarfs the "regular" points, that I don't particularly see the big appeal of points + points when the "+ points" is even a smaller number than the regular points. That is so miniscule compared to 1/4 of a free stay, or even 1/16 of a free domestic airline trip, it's not funny.

But if you don't choose the airline rewards that earn the fastest (not just Southwest, but also some of the British Arilines which give 4-digit counts of miles per one-night stay), and you don't or can't hotel hop to maximize such earnings, and you also won't chain hop to follow faster-earning promos, then I guess you have to continue to earn hotel points slowly...

(To be clear: I do think much of the time HHonors points take a long time to accumulate, when they aren't running the rare 4=25k promo, but I don't think that's true of hotel points in general as much.)

docr775

With Hilton, just like any other hotel chain or airline program, you have to look at all the promotions and try to get the most out of it. For the last two quarters I took advantage of the stay 4 get 1 free promotion. I used points to book two rooms at the Cavalieri for the summer before the change in redemption rates. I used the Q3FN certificates to book a third room for my parents during the same period. Three rooms at the Cavalieri for July 3-9 would have set me back about $9K. All those nights spent at the Hampton Inns and HGIs finally paid off. Using the points and miles option gets me enough BMI miles every year to get a J ticket to Europe using the cash and miles option. So a double points/miles option would make things that much easier.

As a BD Gold, if you get 2k BMI miles per night, up to 6K per 3 night stay, you could really rack up some reward miles.

dwcatty

+2^

My wife and I stayed in the W-A in NYC on our wedding night on points, a week in Hawaii on our honeymoon on points, a night at the W-A Trianon Palace in Versailles with a Q3FN and 8 nights at the Paris ADT last month on points. My folio from the ADT showed $2400, and that is room value only, not counting the value of breakfast for eight nights and drinks in the evenings. Hhonors points have given us some great vacations. And we used diamond force to redeem a night at a Hampton in Cherokee, NC on a 4th of July weekend one year when the temps soared into the 90s and a tent no longer seemed like fun.

A lot of those nights were earned with Hampton stays, and with matching his and hers AMEX cards. I practically gave up trying to redeem airline miles for points years ago. I still have accounts, but agree with travelinfoo, it has become so difficult to get flights that you actually want to fly on. With Hilton I always get to stay where ever and whenever I want.

CAlfaro441

What is the best way to have HH set up as? As Points + points , or points + miles.
I'm trying to earn points to get a Mac laptop. I'm familiar w/marriott rewards, and HH is similar w/the exception of this choice that they give you mixing points and miles.

sdsearch

Poor use of points. Using hotel points for other than hotel stays and using miles for other than airline trips typically results in no better "award" value than you'd get by simply getting 1% cashback, sometimes even less! The same number of points that might get you a hotel worth $200++ might easily get you less than $50 (maybe way less) of any sort of merchandise rewards. Basically, all the merchandise rewards are processed as a "point to cash equivalent" conversion, and then scaled to whatever the cash value of the award is. And to make things worse, they usually use the "list price" to value the merchandise points award, so you can't make use of sales the way you could if you were collecting cashback and buying the item yourself.

Hotel stays and airline trips are able to be much higher valued with points/miles because they're giving away "excess inventory" which doesn't cost them much "incrementally". On the other hand, the hotel has no better access to prices on Mac laptops or other merchandise than you do (probably even worse, because the points program is locked into one supplier), and so merchandise rewards are routinely poor value (unless you "naturally" have tons more points than you can use any other way because you're doing very high amounts of business travel).

kats

True, especially so with HH points. SPG points are often worth transferring to airline miles with promos, though. With 50% bonus promo, I am transferring all my SPG and Priority Club points to US miles.

divemistressofthedark

But if you're absolutely bound and determined to use points on merchandise, the Amex Membership Rewards program isn't always a 100% horrific use of points, especially if you've got a tight cash flow, you need something and you're not planning on much travel over the foreseeable future. (I got a Canon point and shoot there a few years ago that's worked like a champ, and given how much I've used it was probably a reasonably good value, all things considered.)

Also, when buying a Mac (I'm typing this on an MBP...) Consider buying a refurb, or last year's model on Ebay. These machines hold up for a good long time, and Apple warranties are pretty good. Plenty of people are always trying to upgrade to the newest and "best," so there's a lot of lightly used inventory on auction sites. Also, if you buy a refurb using your Amex, you get doubled warranty. Sweet, eh?

Still no 3Q promo announcement? Hmmmmm.

Keyser

doesn't look like i will have any hilton stays next quarter....i have no international travel for the next few months & the only 2 hiltons in my country are in the city i live in....sucks though, it would have been nice to get the double points....i got about 70k bonus points this quarter....

Ravenboy2001

I'm not holding my breath, but wouldn't it be great if the 3rd Quarter promo was something along the lines of, "Take your pick" where you had a choice of several options INCLUDING the current 4-stay/1 free cert option?

Just based on my business travel pattern and frequent STAYS versus consecutive days, this quarter has been incredible for me. I'd love another 3-months to "stock up".

Double points? BOOOORING! Gimme free certs any day of the week and keep them as flexible as possible. That's the ultimate reward perk right there.