New points redemption methods

[nate89]

Hilton HHonors™ - Expanded Rewards
What are your thoughts on this?

I was interested and looking at the rates required to get a nice room. I took a random date to compare it and worked out how much each point was worth.

On dec 12-13 all rooms have the same point value - $0.0042690 (using standard rate w/o breaky) - and I have a feeling this now follows a per-day valuation - I.E. you can now get a room at the Hilton Sydney for under 50k points and same for other hotels on days it is cheaper (although on the other hand some days will be more than 50k).

Being able to book specific rooms largely benefits blue and silver members since gold/diamond tend to be upgraded anyway, but nice to see that at least I can redeem for a nicer room if my gold were to expire!

I haven't looked at the pay + points combo yet, and didn't manage to find the upgrade site (perhaps you need an existing booking to see it...), but I am guessing it will be a similar XE rate? Has anyone found it?

 

[serfty]

Sucks IMHO, because some hotels are basically making standard awards unavailable - the expanded award rate are generally higher than standard.

 

[nate89]

I haven't looked at it, but given the date I picked was one of the cheapest it does appear that way.

Am wondering whether it is worthwhile just converting my HH points to QF (if that's possible).

 

[serfty]

There's quite a heated thread on FT at the moment:

• Premium Room Reward only scam: Major Devaluation in Hilton HHonors Program - FlyerTalk Forums

 

[Moopere]

I haven't looked at it, but given the date I picked was one of the cheapest it does appear that way.

Am wondering whether it is worthwhile just converting my HH points to QF (if that's possible).

I've got to make a decision on this too. Conversion HH:QFF is 6.67:1 from memory. Looks like HH points are maintaining their relatively long standing 'value' of 0.4c / point

So, 50,000HH points = about $200 of room redemption (unless you can get better via 'classic' redemption)

50,000HH points = 7496QFF points

I value QFF points at 2-3c each, so for this example = $150-$224

As I tend to choose the higher end of my QFF redemptions I'd probably go for the conversion, but you can see theres not a lot in it really.