Is there any value left in the Honors program? Honestly, I don't see it. With the possible exception of the Aspire card free night, I don't see how the Honors program would now engender any loyalty among customers. Certainly, almost no one is is going to earn anything of value from their actual hotel stays (which, you would think, should be the primary purpose of the program). And there isn't even a plausible strategy to gin up points with their credit cards. Who is really going to accumulate hundreds of thousands of points for a short vacation stay -- and even if, through heroic efforts, they somehow could, wouldn't they do better playing some other loyalty game?

It just feels like the Hilton loyalty program is now a scam. A bit like Marriott's strategy: have a loyalty program just for appearances, but don't make it remotely "generous" because it doesn't actually drive profitability.

I am a bit surprised Hilton doesn't have any "point sale" promotions that might encourage participation in the program among "normal" guests. Like they could offer "sales" on designated point redemptions regularly. Choice Hotels -- no leader in this field -- is now doing this. And IHG regularly has point redemption sales (admittedly less valuable now, as they have also devalued). The hotel chains seem to take their cues from the airline programs, and I see that AA is now having real, "obtainable" award sales -- like their current Aug/Sept promo of 5000 mile domestic flights. I would think such sales would keep regular customers engaged in the program. Hilton right now is doing basically nothing to keep regular customers engaged.

Don't know about that. They sometimes had excellent promotions and I earned around 50x pts per $. Even at the normal 14x Aspire rate, it's way better than the pathetic 6x earned on Marriott cards (even factoring Marriott pts worth ~50% more).

From a business view, their strategy was brilliant. Offer great SLH redemption rates for a while, get everyone including bloggers hooked and praising, taking market share away from Hyatt. Then devaluate and hope enough people sticks around, still offering select great values (FNC). It's what all businesses do to gain market share. The drop is inevitable. When the opportunity appears, get on it sooner than later.

If a Diamond member with an Aspire card spends $200 night at a Hampton Inn (certainly no bargain), how many nights would he typically need to stay to earn another free night (assuming the free night cost 40K)?

$200 with the current lack of promotion earns me….

2000 base
2000 bonus
2800 aspire (14x on Hilton spend)

total is 6800 points

Assume a standard room is 40k points, that’s 5.88 nights per 40,000 redemption.

Agreed, let us all be honest ,the inititial SLH property values were too low in points, For my specific redemption . The Santorini Canaves Oia suites that I booked was 1400 euro for superior suite and 140k points. That was valuing the points at over 1 cent usd even before the benefit of 5th night free. This had to end!!
Now the values make more sense in comparison to other Hilton points redemptions. The Hilton program still offers great value . I booked many nice 50-60k redemptons last week for our 2026 Europe trip with 5th night free that represented very good value.

Well, that's certainly better than an old-fashioned 10-hole loyalty punch card. You certainly need an Aspire card to make the earnings meaningful. And Hilton does have a reputation for being "more generous" in earning points for stays than its competitors. Still, hardly anyone is going to be able to save up for a free long-weekend at an "aspirational" property staying at even relatively-expensive Hilton motels. It would seem like they'd do better being disloyal with a regular travel credit card and shopping around for the best price and best hotel each time.

The 'devaluation' of HH points has been happening for at least a couple years, and not just at luxury properties.
I usually stay at mid-level and upscale Hilton properties, not the Luxury properties, and the redemption rates at these properties has really dropped since the pandemic.

For example: in 2019, a middle-of-the road mid-scale Hampton Inn or HGI would run you 22,500-27,500 points a night.
Now they are consistently 40,000-50,000 points a night, and you will almost never see a rate below 30,000 points a night. That's a roughly 75% points-price increase.
6 years ago, a typical Hilton would run me 40,000-50,000 points a night, and now they are usually 60,000-80,000 points.

I've been loving the regular 'promotions' (and sad that the current promotion is so meager), but those extra points are more than wiped-out by the increased point charge for rooms, and are needed to make up for the generally dropping value of the points.

"Devaluation" is the headline, but that's not necessarily the truth. Dynamic pricing is essentially designed to charge more points when the room rate increases. And if hotels are charging $500 per night, then award costs are going to be 100,000+. You don't call it a "devaluation" (of the dollar essentially) if a hotel charges $600 instead of $500, you call it inflation or price-gouging or whatever.

What would actually be a "devaluation" would be if Hilton tweaked the algorithm so that Honors points are worth 0.38 cents instead of 0.42 cents (or whatever the actual numbers are). But thanks to dynamic pricing, that's almost impossible to know. But the only thing that is noticed is the top-end caps being increased.

Right. I even stayed in (admittedly rare) Hampton Inn for 10K not very long ago. That's when the Honors program was lucrative for "everyday" motel stays. Then they devalued, and I mostly abandoned the program for IHG. Now, though, IHG's devaluations have shifted my "everyday" business to Wyndham and Choice.

There is no limit on the amount of influx of Aspire creditcards entering the HH ecosystem
As Hilton is focused on the US Client�le, a lot of points generating opportunies are generated for the HH ecosystem
+ world events / trends amongst airlines & competitor hotel chains
makes a lot of demand for a fixed set amount of rooms
=
devaluations / inflation

Hilton couldn't give a monkeys about the cash rate though, because (unless the hotel is full) the amount it pays for a reward is in the management contract - usually $50 or so.

The other thing people forget is how system funds work. Hilton is not allowed to profit from the loyalty scheme. The hotels pay money in from every say, the hotels get money back via redemptions and marketing. It's far more likely that Lando Norris's success and the increased cost of funding F1 etc is the reason for these changes.

The real issue is when (as Marriott has publicly stated it is doing) you cut the % fee charged to owners for loyalty / marketing to encourage more hotels to join you. You're struggling then because there is far less money in the pot.

Deval is the deeply ingrained points lingo for what normal people call inflation

It's been a while since I've stayed in one. My last 10k hotel was Hilton Garden Inn Hanoi right before Covid, and a few years before that for US ones (which went up first).



Right on. Hilton used to be my goto program for low-category redemptions (other than the periodic IHG Points Breaks). I made many trips domestic and international driven by those redemptions. IIRC the knife started butchering in 2018, and by Jan 2020 HGI Hanoi was the only good cat1/cat2 hotel left on my radar.

As I noted earlier, I think it's wise for loyalty programs to have some low-point "obtainable" awards. If the Hampton Inns are going to be 30,000+ points, I have to believe "engagement" in the program significantly declines. It becomes pointless for most travellers. What's the value of a loyalty program that doesn't engender loyalty?

Yes, the fixed reward cost is generally fixed. But the amount going into the pot is variable - a % of revenue. So "Honors revenue" is going up, but its costs are fixed. Sure there might be more $50 reward nights, but the ratio of Hilton points to $50 reward nights should still be fixed, all other things being equal.

The variables that would suck money out of the ecosystem are:

1. increasingly full hotels --> more reimbursements of average room rate
2. unexpectedly high redemptions at SLH hotels bankrupting the system

The costs of partially sponsoring an F1 team ought to be a rounding error for a major hotel chain, even if for some reason the loyalty programme is actually paying out of its own stand-alone revenues. Marketing is marketing, and if F1 costs more due to success bonuses, then they can cut back on other marketing channels

But, sure, if any hotel chain is taking shortcuts with charging hotels for marketing, the loyalty programme is doomed...