It better be :D
I almost had two heart attacks now seeing huge jumps.

Conrad Koh Samui:
Was 80K for a shoulder season. Today 95K.
My booking when it was 80K had Points & Money for 32K + ~5,400 THB.
Today if I use the same 32K points, the money portion is 15,750 THB. So the money portion almost tripled.:td:

Not sure why you're not indicating the exact days, but I can see standard rooms availability at 80K per night in early April during the week. Nothing changed here.

If you previously redeemed low-season/shoulder-season awards, this change hoses you hard.

If you previously redeemed high-season awards, and you usually have enough points to cover whole awards, this change seems to have no impact...for as long as HH holds to their promise to keep the high-season cap at today's level for each property.

If you previously redeemed high-season awards, and you sometimes don't have quite enough points for a whole award, this could be a real enhancement for you. You can use the slider and still keep a high value-per-point, and fully drain your entire account down to almost 0 on a pretty good award.

The more hotel loyalty programs are devalued the more it will make sense to just book through Priceline/Expedia and also have a much greater choice of independent properties, especially if one is not bound my corporate contracts. There is a point where brand loyalty will not make any sense anymore, just like with airlines as well I guess.

A few more data points
 

Seeing all kinds of points pricing inconsistencies yesterday and today for the Doubletree Barcelona in September (three night stay). Yesterday it said only premium awards were available at some odd rate of 74,4xx a night. This morning that rate was 76,2xx, then an hour later a flat 72,000 (with no disclaimer about premium awards only being available). Hotel is bookable for cash those nights at 242€ (refundable).

Yesterday I held my back-up choice the Hilton Barcelona at 40,000 per night, and that rate is still in force today. The Hilton Diagonal is sold out BTW.

Points rates go way up too
 

The claim about standard awards not going up is completely UNTRUE. Last week I made a reservation at the Hilton Reykjavik Nordica for June at 40k per night. Today the standard reward for the same time period is 60k.

Oh well. It's not like anyone actually believed that Hilton was making this change so that they could charge LESS points, right?

I see properties in London that did not go below 70K per night at 50K per night in low season. There are really cheap points rates as far as I can see.
The only increase that I have seen so far is for the Hilton Hawaiian Village around Christmas/New Year's, but it is negligible (8K points for 5 nights, including 5th night free). They probably moved a date or two around from low to high season.

Reading a lot of doom and gloom here but I've just managed to secure a fantastic booking on points - 5 nights at the Hilton Warwick for a paltry 60k points (cash rates approx £55/night). Before the update the property was 30k/night so I think it's good for redeeming at properties that were typically cash low but points high.

Curio Hamburg, points&money:
before: 16.000 points plus EUR 58,91
now: 16.000 points plus EUR 115,06 (+95,3%)

Standard rate appr. EUR 200,-, before and now.

I assume that we're going to see people posting all sorts of these examples but it's very curious that there wasn't more discussion of this when Hilton announced these changes. It was obvious points and cash was being taken away as we knew it. What did people think "linear" was going to mean?

I'm ok with devaluation outrage. But I'm surprised now that people seem to be surprised.

From the day they announced this, the math was pretty much knowable.

Hi all,

Jumping in on the thread to share some clarification in case there was any confusion. You might have already seen, but just in case...

We found a technical error with the Flexible Dates calendar, and per my earlier post on this thread, we’re working to correct it. Currently, you’re only able to see Premium Rewards and a limited number of Standard Rooms on the calendar. Again, this will be fixed so you’re able to view all Standard Rooms. In the meantime, rest assured that Standard Rooms are not going away and will still be available for booking through the updated Points & Money program.

Thanks,
Lauren

Which Hampton went from 5k to 30k? I don't see any Cat 1 properties that have jumped substantially but I might be wrong as I haven't checked them all (and it wouldn't surprise me if all Cat 1 properties became 30k in a few months time)

Previously, the standard reward could be either 40k or 60k depending on dates. The promise was that the maximum would not go up. The maximum is still 60k, so the promise has been kept.

After checking several reservations in Japan, US and Barbados and rates for those dates my understanding is that 1 HH pt is exactly valued as 0.7 cent (always calculated from the _gross_ rates). This is a result coming from 5 diff hotels, dates.