Earning Rewards
Cardholders will earn Hilton Honors points at the following rates: 12 Hilton Honors Bonus Points per dollar on eligible purchases at participating hotels and resorts within the Hilton portfolio and 5 Hilton Honors Bonus Points per dollar spent on the first $100,000 in purchases each calendar year, 3 points thereafter.
New cardholders are also eligible for the following welcome bonus: Earn 175,000 Hilton Honors bonus points after spending $8,000 in purchases on the card within the first six months of card membership, offer ends 6/5.
Hilton Business cardmembers get mid-tier Hilton Gold status—which includes valuable benefits like a food and beverage credit in the U.S. and breakfast at international locations, 80% bonus points on stays and room upgrades. In addition, cardholders can earn top-tier Diamond elite status by spending $40,000 in eligible purchases in a calendar year. The status upgrade will be valid through the end of the calendar year it was earned and the subsequent calendar year.
Redeeming Rewards
The most straightforward and cost-effective use of Hilton points is for stays at one of Hilton’s over 7,500 properties. Hilton Honors will allow you to use points for any available room. However, the points price for a night can vary depending on demand. That said, most reward programs have blackout dates, so it’s nice to have the opportunity to redeem points even for peak dates.
Standard Room Rewards are the cheapest award option, but Hilton Honors members also have the option to redeem for Premium Room Rewards and even suites.
You can get an idea of how many points you’ll need to redeem for a Standard Room Reward by using Hilton’s Points Explorer tool. After entering your points budget and your destination, Hilton will show you a list of matching hotels. You can further filter the results by hotel brand.
As a Hilton Gold member through the Hilton Business Card, you’ll get a fifth night free when you redeem points for a standard room reward stay of five or more nights.
Hilton stays are generally going to provide the best value for redeeming Hilton points. However, there are some additional redemption options.
Through Hilton’s partnership with Lyft, you can redeem Hilton points for Lyft credits—4,500 points are enough for a $10 credit. That’s a redemption rate of just over 0.22 cents per point, which is a very low return compared to other options.
You can also redeem Hilton points for Amazon purchases. But again, it’s not a great redemption rate. A $100 purchase would set you back 50,000 Hilton points. That’s a redemption rate of just 0.2 cents per point.
Hilton also lets members redeem Hilton points for rental car reservations. From a few sample searches, we found the redemption rate is between 0.1 and 0.3 cents per point.
You can also convert your Hilton points to airline miles with a long list of airline transfer partners, but the transfer rate is quite low. For example, 10,000 Hilton points will only get you 1,000 Delta SkyMiles.
Rewards Potential
For consumer credit cards, Forbes Advisor uses data from various government agencies in order to determine both baseline income and spending averages across various categories. The 70th percentile of wage-earning households brings in $$118,438 annually, with $39,337 in expenses that can reasonably be charged to credit cards each year. For consistency, we estimate that a sole proprietor will have expenses in the same range.
*You would also earn an 80% points bonus for the Gold status that comes with the card or 27436 points.