The sneaky devaluation roll out continues: today HGI Singapore went from 20k to 30k, a shocking 50% increase for a property where cash rates average U$100.

If you haven't yet, I recommend you lock in points rates for those properties where the increase hasn't happened yet.

That's not surge pricing. That is a higher category of room pricing.

While antebellum is mixing up standard room pricing vs premium room pricing, it is notable if standard rooms are simply less available than they used to be (though there doesn't seem to be a way to confirm if that is true)

True. Although as you note, that is almost impossible to know. I would guess that is more of a property by property thing than a global Hilton Honors thing too.

That's not new.

Hampton Inn & Suites Bakersfield/Hwy 58, CA was in my radar for a road trip this summer. It was 10,000 points but I didn’t pull the trigger. Now it is increased to 20,000 points. Hilton sucks.

You might as well get the bonus since it's a one-time ordeal (unless a no-lifetime offer crops up down the road).

One of my favorite redemption properties too. Used it twice last summer at 10,000 points.

My research shows 27 of 42 hotels in USA that were 10,000 points are now 20,000 points.

27 of 42 Hilton Honors 10,000 points hotels in USA went to 20,000 this week

Appears that almost all NYC properties haven't jumped in max points rate... (yet). I've got a trip in November and have been monitoring the rates for a little while now. Pretty much all properties have been stuck at the maximum redemption rate (70k, 80k, 95k) for all nights, even though the cash rate varies wildly during my stay. NYC has always had pretty poor redemption rates, but if they tack another 10k on per night that would just about make HH points useless. Guess I better get something on the books to burn a pile of points.

That is always good advice. Points don't get more valuable and reservations are almost always refundable.

The reality is Hilton doesn't have (public) categories or an award chart. Therefore, Hilton isn't going to announce category changes for properties (which is what this looks suspiciously like) in advance. No matter how anyone feels about it, that appears to be the reality of the situation.

It will be a far bigger deal if and when Hilton devalues the credit cards (by either removing the status, reducing how many points you can earn, introducing new levels of status only attainable through stays, etc). Hilton points are by far the easiest to earn (they are regularly sold for $0.005 cents each, the credit cards earn points at the highest rate, etc) and should be redeemed frequently.

Spare a thought for those of us outside the US who don't have access to these generous credit cards. Devaluations hit us pretty hard :(

It doesn't change the logic: the points are trash and don't bother accumulating them in any great quantity. Burn as soon as you can get anything useful out of it. IMO if it's possible to decouple to another chain in other regions of the world (Hilton's core region is still the US) that can meet your needs, because you can't get the credit cards, and you're primarily interested in loyalty point accumulation might as well do it. Don't know if you'd find any, but hotel loyalty programs are all swirling down the devaluation drain- maybe some faster than others.

I decided I was going to go over to hotels.com as a primary vehicle for booking hotels some time ago, and let Hilton/Marriott/IHG/Hyatt points accumulate very tactically/burn often. I've been born out by that: most of the hotels in those chains I've redeemed in in the past five years have all bumped their points required, sometimes by 33-50%. In that kind of environment, brand loyalty where you chase after points for aspirational travel is for suckers. You might as well be collecting Venezuelan bolivars as Hilton/Hyatt/Marriott/IHG. I haven't noticed 33-50% inflation in US or GB currency like that, so I decided that what is effectively a cash rebate for spend (hotels.com) worked OK.