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This post certainly isn’t a specific recommendation as to where you should spend your next holiday (not least, as we have no idea when you’ll be able to next holiday). However, we hope it’s an interesting and helpful case study, in that it combines four key elements of “Hilton-Hacking” that we often make use of, as follows:
- A cheap Hilton Honors points redemption option
- A Hilton Honors points-buying promo.
- A solid Hilton Honors points promo
- The Hilton “Fifth Night Free” Redemption Bonus
What’s The Headline Stay?
The example stay, and this is a fairly random example, is the Hilton Hurghada Plaza, a 5-Star resort hotel on the Egyptian Red Sea coast. The dates we have (again fairly randomly) chosen are 18-23 March. The important fact there is it’s a 5 night stay, as this helps you get value (see further below).
What’s The Headline Cost?
Per point (1) above, a King Guest Room at the Hilton Hurghada Plaza costs a very reasonable 14,000 points a night.
So, technically, that’s 70,000 Hilton points for your five night stay. We can do better than that, but that’s the headline rate, in itself – really not bad. If you value a Hilton point at around 0.4 pence each, as we do, that’s £280 for the five nights. (Note, as we will see below, you will actually buy Hilton Honors points in this example for slightly less than that amount.)
Buying Those 70K Hilton Points
Hilton currently has a 100% bonus offer on buying points, which runs until 8 March 2021. This lets you buy Hilton points for 0.5 US cents each. So, those 70K points will cost you exactly $350 (£253).
However, we’re now going to chip away at that 70K point total for the stay!
The Hilton Honors Points Promo Rebate
The current Hilton Honors points promo not only gives you 2K Honors points per stay, it also gives you 5K bonus points for 5 nights. As a result, a 5 night stay earns you a points rebate of 7,000 Hilton Honors points, taking the net total for your stay down to 63,000 points, which would cost $315.
So, the new “running total” is 63K points / $315 (£227).
The Old Classic – 5th Night Free
All of Hilton’s Silver, Gold and Diamond members get their fifth night free on award bookings. As a result, if you have status, one of those 14K nights can be entirely discounted, per the following example booking made by me:
So, take 14K Hilton Honors points off the 63K running total, and you’re down to a total of 49K points for the whole stay – just $245 (£177) worth of points.
£177 for five nights is a quite remarkable £35.40 a night – an absolutely fantastic price for a Five Star Hilton hotel on the Red Sea coast.
Andrew M says
Hilton Hurghada Plaza used to be a 5000 point hotel until very recently. That was an even better bargain . There doesn’t seem to be any 5000 point Hiltons left in Egypt. There’s still plenty in Turkey but not many in places you’s actually want to stay.
Joe Deeney says
Aye- I used to love the 5k Hiltons. Not least, because they were really fun to write about when good promos were on, even if nobody actually wanted to spend 10 nights at an airport hotel in Istanbul 😉