Recent Hilton / Aspire devaluations summary
 

Please mention if I missed another devaluation. Currently, this is the list of devaluations I'm aware of from the last few months for this year. I figured it would be useful to have them all listed and organized together. Significant changes this year. Can't say most of us didn't see that changes would be coming, but there's sure a lot of them. The value equation for the Aspire has shifted considerably.

Hilton points in general:
1. Hilton points / dynamic rewards. Up to ~50k pts/night at most hotels for <$150 rooms now. Used to be around 0.04 cents at the worst, now it's often well below $0.033 for standard awards and sometimes $0.025 at the worst for standard rewards, with premium room rewards currently often at lower points rates than standard awards -- at least until they get around to updating those to worse value.

Aspire:
1. 14X points per dollar -> Value reduced ~20% by Hilton devaluation above. The non-hilton spend categories are now all pretty much lower than available on other non-premium credit cards that have no annual fee.
2. Airline credit coding issues. Terms say based on coding, but now they appear to have exempted most charges from crediting based on coding only like terms specify and others require manual call in or must be under $20 to get the credit to apply. Yes, the terms always said the credit was intended to cover less things than people actually were getting redeemed for.
3. $250 resort credit. Amex is changing terms terms to exclude any prepaid rates.
4. Priority Pass. As of August 1, Amex will no longer cover standard Priority Pass benefits, only a small subset of the actual Priority Pass program. No plans to add Amex's own lounges to the aspire either (that I've seen).

I think you might be going a little overboard here. My recent search showed 50k hotels going for $200-$300 before taxes. I know this changes, but I would hardly say most 50k hotels are <$150/night.

Earlier this year, I upgraded my $0 AF card (which had been transferred from Citi) after receiving an offer for 125k bonus points. I like the Gold status but will be downgrading unless there is a decent retention offer as I never use the card and see no reason to pay another AF.

I had previously received approx. award redemption value of 005 per point but that was before the latest "enhancements" so your current valuation may be more accurate. It is of course somewhat subjective for everyone as it is dependent on the rates for properties where you plan to redeem.

i agree the number I gave were with respect to the worst values I see now (thus the "up to"). With capped value points stays and 5th night free, 0.005 isn't extremely rare yet. But with 5th night and capped it used to be 0.625 that wasn't rare before the last round....

For example, HGI LBV in FL, 37k points or $111 including tax MVP rate. 0.03 cpp. 0.026cpp including points not earned on reward stays.
(It's fairly simple algebra to account for rewards points, as follows:
Cash price: Room+ 54 points/$beforetax = Room + 5400 points = $111.
$111 - 5400 points = Room

Points price: 37000 points = Room.

Thus,
37000 points = $111 - 5400 points
42400 points = $111
1 point = $0.0026
)


Not the worst one I saw either, but one I booked for a family member recently. Despite having points, went with cash because its a pretty bad points value vs other properties currently available.

I think you might be going a little overboard on this item as well.

My understanding is that the restaurant credit will no longer be covered by American Express as of August 1. If I recall correctly, the restaurant credit was not even implemented yet as part of the Priority Pass benefits when the current series of Hilton Honors American Express cards was introduced — meaning that the benefits which were available then will still be available after August 1.

Interestingly, Amex has not publicly communicated or sent members any notification of the supposed change in benefits.

I'm sure they can just screw us, but it SEEMS like there might be a need for notification other than showing up at a PP restaurant and having someone say "Oh... that card doesn't work like it did yesterday, sir."

(I'm truly bummed if it does go down like that - I don't have a lounge option at the airports I often am in, but do like the restaurant benefit.)

I just booked a ~$250 room for 40,000 points. So I wouldn't use your 50k $150 room as the gold standard. It is a very nice hotel, in a big city, with an executive lounge. It was the one I wanted.

that's not what will happen. The priority pass will still work with the priority pass network. You'd just see a charge show up.
.
all priority pass locations say its not their responsibility to know how/if you are charged, because there's multiple Priority Pass membership variants.

So today at LHR T3, I went to the No1 lounge with the wife and in-laws. I asked the agent how many people I could guest in and the agent said that she wasn't sure? I then asked if I could pay for people to come in to which the agent said yes however she wasn't sure how much it would cost as each card is different? She scanned my app and all 4 of us went in. Will they now automatically charge my Amex and if so how much?

From Amex terms (Aspire new card page):
"Priority Pass is an independent airport lounge access program. At any visit to a Priority Pass Select lounge that admits guests, you may bring in two guests for no charge. You will be charged the amount equal to the guest visit fee of the Priority Pass Standard program for any additional guests."
Amex terms still currently link to the regular priority pass select webpage listing for participating locations, with no warning of the pending cut to the program.

The Chase Sapphire Reserve states $27 fee for additional guests beyond the 2 included. I'd expect you'd see similar charge for your 3rd guest.
But the Priority Pass website lists a $32 guest charge with the Standard membership, which is the amount referred to in Amex terms. (https://www.prioritypass.com/en/join-prioritypass)
I wonder if/what charge you will see on your Amex statement for your 3rd guest.

This is how it works now. (Unless you exceed the 2 guests, or 3 people total in one visit, which terms say you will be charged for additional guests).


It's only after Aug 1 that Amex is excluding any locations they deem as "non-lounge airport experiences"
https://www.businessinsider.com/amer...credits-2019-5

There is no "Restaurant benefit" you're referring to. Priority pass has some restaurants in their regular Priority Pass network, because there aren't participating lounges at so many airports. These are all defined and listed as "lounges" by the Priority Pass program. There are also locations that have exited the program over 2 years, or limited their hours further. I'm not sure what you mean -- that Amex should only cover the original locations (except of course not the ones exiting the program?) and it's not incredibly deceptive and confusing to claim the annual fee includes benefits of the Priority Pass Select membership and then only include a subset of locations that a Priority Pass Select membership covers?

It is of course reasonable that they can change the card benefits at any time (although arguable that they would forfeit the AF covering the current year if they make the benefits cuts retroactive for time periods for which the annual fee has already been paid) It's also unclear at this time if the change will only affect new Priority Pass cards issued after Aug 1 or ones that are already out there and expire sometime in the next 12 months.

The main change in airline fees that I'm familiar with is the recoding of AA gift cards. In 2018, you could buy small AA gift cards to consume the airline credit. Now that does not work. However, Amex never really claimed it would work - buying gift cards was never a published benefit - so it's hard to complain about it too much. My biggest complaint is that you can't use the fee to cover an F upgrade, although you can for an MCE upgrade as long as you don't do it in the same transaction as buying the ticket.

The coding varies by airline. I don't know what the experiences are for people who have selected anything but AA.

The main change in PP that I'm aware of is the loss of the restaurant credits. This one irks me because my main use of it is Portland, where the AS lounge can (and does) arbitrarily deny entry to PP members even though it's listed as a partner lounge. Access to the restaurant only seemed fair - a backup plan for when the lounge was denying entry, which it almost always does these days.

I still look at the resort credit as a good benefit. I have no trouble consuming it every year. We always spend at least one weekend per year at an HH resort somewhere, and I never book prepaid rates. Even if the stay is an award stay, we'll probably have dinner one night plus some drinks by the pool and eat through the $250.

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.

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 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.

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:(

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.

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.