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Just occasionally, you get the opportunity to combine a series of deals that can make “travel hacking” a genuinely comically cheap pursuit.

One such opportunity is currently available, which enables you to get nights at a Hilton hotel for as little as £1.90 a head per night. I am not making this up. I have just returned from a 5 night stay at £1.90 per head a night – and it included breakfast!

How so cheap?

This rather amazing “hack” combines:

• The current Hilton 100% bonus on points purchases
• The current 2,000 Honors points you get per night for all stays
• The 500 Honors points you get for stays booked via the Hilton app
• The Hilton “5th night free” on reward bookings (Silver and up, granted but you can get Silver status through the great value Hilton Barclaycard in any event)
• The superb value you can get at Hilton Category 1 hotels (and indeed Category 2 hotels – see further below)
• The Hilton “2nd guest stays free” policy
• The free breakfast for Hilton Gold/Diamond members

How do you do it?

First of all, you need to take advantage of the current Hilton 100% Honors points purchase bonus, which lets you buy Hilton points for 0.4p each. That means, at the headline rate, you’re paying £20 per night for a Category 1 hotel, which are all 5,000 points a night.

That, in itself, is a great deal.

 

But you said £1.90 a head per night, not £20 a night!

Yes, and this is where the jiggery pokery begins.

The 5,000 points a night is the headline amount, but a five night stay at a Category 1 Hilton can be reduced from 25,000 points to an incredible 9500 points (cost? £38), as follows:

• Via the 5th night free policy on reward stays, you only need pay 20,000 points for 5 nights.

• The current Hilton 2K every day offer gives you 2K points per night, so the net cost is 10,000 points (20,000 points less 5 x 2,000 points). Note that to invoke this on Reward Stays (i.e. those paid for with Honors points), you will need to charge something very small to the room to generate some base Honors points from the stay. Unfortunately this will not apply at Hamptons, where you don’t earn Honors points for incidental spend.

• Book via the Hilton app, and you’ll get an additional 500 bonus points, taking the net cost of the room for the 5 days to 9500 points.

• The £1.90 a head rate applies to a stay with 4 people. To get 4 people into the room, book as 1 adult and 2 children and then get the second adult in on the “2nd Guest Stays Free” policy.

• 9500 points will currently cost you £38, so that’s £7.60 a night.

• With 4 people staying at £7.60 a night, you are paying a remarkable, remarkable £1.90 a head.

Anything else?

Yes – if you don’t fancy the 5 night stay, bear in mind that a one night stay will still give you fantastic value too. You’ll pay just 2500 points per night (£10, or £2.50 a head with 4 sharing) –  the 5000 Honors points room cost, less the 2000 points bonus, less the 500 bonus for booking via the app.

Even if you can’t find a Category 1 hotel that works for you, at these rates the offer also translates very well to the (ordinarily) 10K a night Category 2 Hilton hotels, too. 

In short, even ignoring the additional complexities I set out above, the bottom line here is that buying Hilton Honors points with a 100% bonus and spending them on Category 1 and 2 reward stays, is a fantastic deal. Make it better, and you can get crazy value – right up to £1.90 a head stays, including breakfast.