Hilton Honors has announced a series of changes to its loyalty program. While most of them will roll out over the coming months, the first change has started to roll out. It has tweaked its name – removing an ‘H’ from its name. It is now just Hilton Honors, instead of Hilton HHonors.
Program Changes
Name change aside, Hilton have announced four more changes that it will roll out over the coming months:
- Changes to Points and Money
- Ability to use points at Amazon
- Points pooling
- One time extension of Diamond Status
The details of the changes were shared on the Flyertalk forum, and are outlines below:
Points and Money
Starting in late February, Hilton Honors members will have the ability to choose nearly any combination of Points and money to pay for their stay, any time, with no blackout dates. Members will be able to apply points and money booking to a range of rates. Points will be selectablle in increments of 1,000 points, starting from 5,000 points.
No more categories
In making this change, Hilton will also be doing away with Hotel Categories. This affects standard award nights and pricing will become dynamic based on demand. During the transition to the new system, Hilton will be ensuring that the current maximum point limits remain in place. This may change going forward, however,
Spend at Amazon
Hilton Honors members will be able to use their Points to purchase products on Amazon.com. Our partnership with Amazon will give members more choices and more ways to use Points. Hilton have put a ‘summer’ timeline on this, which would mean winter for us
Points Pooling
Starting this April, members will be able to combine their Hilton Honors Points with family and friends on future award stays.The previous transfer fee will be removed, making it completely free for a Hilton Honors member to pool their Points with up to 10 family members and friends..
Diamond Status Extension
Hilton are introducing a one off ability to extend Diamond Status, where members might find that their travel plans reduces for a period of time. This could be for any reason, and it seems you may not even have to tell Hilton your reasons. The one downside is that they have some quite stringent criteria on who can apply: You will need to meet one of the following criteria:
• 3+ years as a Diamond Elite with at least 250 nights (paid or reward) since joining the program; or
• 3+ years as a Diamond Elite with at least 500,000 Base Points since joining the program.
