FlyerTalk Forums - Recent Hilton / Aspire devaluations summary

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I was able to get a southwest charge reimbursed the other day. My fare was $229.96 and I paid it this way:

91.99 - travel funds from a prior reservation
40.00 - purchased a WN GC using my Hilton card while not signed into my account
97.97 - charged on my AMEX Hilton card. Purchased on July 3, reimbursed on July 6.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinniped (Post 31281326)

I still look at 14x as a competitive rate for hotel CC earnings. That's about 7-10 cents per dollar (based on my 2019 and 2020 Hilton award redemption values). Hyatt is around 8 cents per dollar. Marriott is around 6 cents per dollar. Obviously with Hilton I'm always more concerned about future devaluations, so the minute I hit 380,000 points I'm looking for my next five-nighter.

The point about $150-250/nt rooms being terrible award values is true. For years that's always been a glaring weakness in the HH program - finding value in the middle of the chart is very, very hard. There are some sweet spots at both the bottom and the top. IMHO, Starwood often had good midrange awards (that Marriott is mostly killing off) and Hyatt still has some nice 2-cent redemptions in middle categories. For me it's mostly been at their Centric brand.

Concur about the earn rate which is sufficient for me to forgo using my JPM (CSR) card (3x points plus stellar travel insurance). However the earn on hotel stays is not sufficient to justify the AF on any of these cards.

For Hyatt, the Cat 4 free night easily offsets the AF and Hyatt probably has the best selection of all cards at this level.
For IC, the free night on my old $49 AF card was just capped at 40k, but again easy to find a property that easily justifies the fee.
For Marriott the old Cat 5 nights were almost impossible for me to use - we will see about the new 35k nights.
For Hilton - I don't really need more airline fee credits that I can't use, don't need PP memberships (both Chase and CNB provide better PP) and don't need resort credits (have never stayed at a Hilton resort).

So Hilton Amex provides the least value for me - of course YMMV.

As for midrange, it would be nice to find Embassy Suite & Hampton properties at a reasonable redemption price in California, but that's like asking IC to reduce the price on its HIX properties on the coast. Not gonna happen. It's basically WA or resorts or bust.

Fortunately I already had my airline credit in for the year but according to the points guy and facebook posts the gift cards on Delta and Southwest are no longer coding for the airline credit:(

My Annual fee is about to post

With the Delta card, if you get your companion cert then downgrade , you keep the cert but and get a 11/12 refund of the delta of the fee if you do it say the month after

Ant idea if you downgrade after the fee if you’d get the Hilton weekend night cert ?

Thats a bummer on the airline fee credit , that kind of takes away a huge benefit , even if it’s not as intended for it to have worked that way

Quote:

Originally Posted by B3nder (Post 31281785)

Looks like southwest too since partway last month.
southwest is a bigger problem because there arent really any incidentals left that would qualify. (Wifi billed through third party, no seat selection/refundability fees just sw's sort-of-but-not-really fare classes that ARE really just seat selection fees but are excluded. No checked bag fees or change fees.) You can now basically just check bag 3+ or buy 40 in flight drinks...

I would assume you could add early bird or a gate upgrade and get the credit.

Quote:

Originally Posted by BrlDsguise (Post 31283479)

I would assume you could add early bird or a gate upgrade and get the credit.

True, but early bird is worthless. And the Chase SW card that still has a slightly negative effective annual fee ($149 for a $75 credit that's not just for "incidentals" and $112 worth of points annually) also includes 4 gate upgrades already.

I only fly delta and their sky team partners so the incidentals is useless to me

some skyclubs sell gift cards and I know club memberships trigger the credit s9 I’m wondering if someone purchases gift. Ar#s at a sky club if that would trigger it. I fly to London at least once a year using a upgrade cert and their is a $100 luxury tax to use it that is billed separately by delta and wondering f that would trigger the credit

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesteroh (Post 31285930)

Do SkyClubs sell food or drink? If so, does that trigger the credit? I would guess that most likely Amex couldn't tell apart food or drink purchases at a SkyClub apart from gift card purchases there (run through the same register). But I have no idea whether any purchases inside any airline's clubs count for Amex "incidentals" credit.

Do Southwest Business Select upgrades purchased after the initial ticket purchase trigger the credit? I occasionally have a high-fare business trip on WN where the BS buy-up might be worthwhile.

Sounds crazy but I redeemed my HH points 1 year ahead of the trip to minimize risk of devaluation, at 0.65 cpp I'm glad to burn them before they devalue again.