Hilton Honors has rolled out its new Points and Money options. This new option allows you to book rooms in the Hilton Honors portfolio by using a combination of Points and cash.
The new option was flagged last month as one of a number of changes being rolled out across the program.
Along with the change to offer the ability to pay money in combination with points, Hilton Honors is doing away with the traditional category charts. That is, hotels will no longer be assigned a category which determines the number of points required for an award. Award pricing will become more dynamic and rise and fall in line with demand.
While rates will be more variable, Hilton have pledged that Award nights would not require more points under the new system. For reference, a calculator has been set up by Hilton to view previous Award categories.
Points and Money options
The rooms eligible for Points and Money redemptions are highlighted on the pricing page for a hotel. You do need to have selected to the Pay with Points option in order to see them. The following screenshot of the room selection for Hilton Sydney shows how this is presented:
After selecting one of the options that give the Points and Money option, proceed through the booking until you arrive at the payment page. This will present you with a slider option as shown below:
The slider can be moved to choose various combinations of Points and Money
There are a couple of things to be aware of with the Points and Money option:
- Points will be awarded on the cash portion of the payment
- The 5th night free offer is not applicable to Points and Money redemptions. They can only be made when the redemption is made wholly in points
- The availability of Points and Money varies on factors such as hotel, season and day of week
In my investigation of the new tool, it appears that Hilton Honors have linked the Award rate with the rate used for the Hilton Honors discount. This shows that the pricing will be more dynamic.
Playing around with various hotels suggest the value of a Hilton Honors points is around 0.6 cents a point. This does vary a little, due to they way point rates are calculated with reference to the cash rates for the rooms.