Hilton’s Hilton Honors loyalty program is, in my opinion, the Delta SkyMiles of the hospitality world. After all, their points have atrocious value, and their elite benefits are fairly meaningless. But, of course, it can get worse, as Hilton continues its race to the bottom with Marriott, significantly increasing award prices at properties around the world.
In my mind, there are two hard to debate truths in the lodging loyalty world. One is that Hilton Honors has among the worst value among any program around. The second is that ever since Marriott Rewards became Marriott Bonvoy, they’ve been competing with Hilton to see who could offer worse value. And, for a time, Marriot was significantly catching up. However, Hilton isn’t going down without a fight as Hilton continues its race to the bottom with Marriott by introducing even worse pricing yet again.
Hilton Continues Its Race to the Bottom
As a reminder, Hilton Honors doesn’t have an award chart, which makes it so much more difficult to keep track of what their pricing is like. However, the fine folks at Miles to Memories noticed that several properties around the world saw a spike in their base award prices. For example, the Waldorf Astoria Grand Wailea saw its base award price jump from 110,000 to 120,000 points per night, which is an increase of roughly 10%. Other examples include the Waldorf Astoria Las Vegas, which jumped from 85,000 to 95,000 points per night and the Conrad Hilton, which went from 95,000 to 100,000 points per night
Overall, the price increases appear to be between 5,000 and 20,000 points per night. On the low end, that isn’t too bad. But, on the high end? Ouch.
It’s worth noting that base prices aren’t the only thing that seems to have changed. Pricing in-general also appears to have gotten refresh, as prices now appears to be dynamic. For example, looking at the Hilton Waikoloa’s pricing in July 2025, prices seem to fluctuate between 70,000 and 80,000 points per night.
To be fair, dynamic pricing is something that’s quite common with other hotel chains nowadays, so Hilton is a bit late to the party. And, since they don’t have an official award chart, it’s not like they have “fixed pricing” anyway. However, this is still a change that we should all be aware of.
The only saving grace to all of this is that the free night certificates continue to work globally, so those are slightly more valuable now. But, of course, you’ll still need to save up more points to cover your other nights, or shell out cash.
Final Thoughts
That Hilton continues its race to the bottom doesn’t surprise me at all. With their growing footprint, they’re probably thinking the same as Marriott – we’re big enough that people will always stay with us no matter what we do. It’s why I decided to abandon by Marriott and Hilton, though I’d still stay with Marriott over Hilton. To me, Marriott’s properties are mostly better than Hilton’s, though I wouldn’t stay with either for loyalty. For me, that’s Hyatt now, though I’m no longer able to retain any elite status with them any longer. Of course, I’m still a Lifetime Platinum Elite with Marriott, though Platinums are a dime a dozen!
At any rate, if any of you out there are Hilton loyalists, what do you think of these changes? Are they slowly pushing you to abandon ship? Or are you sticking with Hilton?