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Even though Hilton Honors no longer operates with fixed award charts, some informal rules have continued to apply. For example, standard rooms at the cheapest hotels would cost 5,000 points per night and 95,000 at the most expensive. But due to the impact that COVID travel restrictions are having on hotel occupancy / rates in many parts of the world, those informal rules no longer seem to apply at the low end (and the new Waldorf Astoria resort in the Maldives has blown through the 95,000 point cap).

The list of hotels that are expected to charge 5,000 points per night is short.

• Hampton by Hilton Ufa Russia
• Hilton Garden Inn Corlu,Tekirdag, Turkey
• Hampton by Hilton Samsun, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Sanliurfa, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Mardin, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Konya, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Erzincan, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Bali Ngurah Rai Airport, Indonesia
• Hilton Garden Inn Diyarbakir, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Ankara Gimat, Turkey
• Hampton by Hilton Bolu, Turkey
• Hampton by Hilton Kahramanmaras, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Izmir Bayrakli, Turkey
• DoubleTree by Hilton Elazig, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Kutahya, Turkey
• Hilton Garden Inn Eskisehir, Turkey
• Hampton by Hilton Bucaramanga, Colombia
• Hampton by Hilton – Yopal, Colombia
• Hampton Inn by Hilton Reynosa/Zona Industrial, Mexico
• Hilton Garden Inn Tuxtla Gutierrez, Mexico
• Hampton Inn Tampico Zona Dorado, Tampico, Mexico

I have only stayed at one hotel on this list – the Hilton Garden Inn near the airport in Bali, Indonesia – because, quite frankly, Mexican industrial parks and Turkish suburbs aren’t places I’m likely to ever visit.

But the Hilton Garden Inn in Bali is a perfectly acceptable hotel in a destination I am thrilled to visit regularly. I am sure that many visitors to Bali rush directly to their beach resort. But for travel hacking backpackers, the hotel offers:

• self laundry facilities
• an easy way to avoid the Balinese “taxi mafia” at the airport
• cheap elite status stay credits
• free breakfast for Gold and Diamond members

So staying at this hotel for your first and/or last night of your stay on the island can make perfect sense (at least to a status-conscious travel hacker on a longer trip through the region).

However, because Indonesia’s borders are essentially closed to tourists, room rates at this hotel have dropped to ~£12.50 or so (after-tax), which means that the hotel is now charging 4,000 points per night. Silver, Gold and Diamond members would receive the 5th night free, meaning you could potentially be paying 3,200 points per night!

Crazily enough, the microscopically low room rates mean that you STILL cannot guarantee yourself more than 0.35p of value for your Hilton points. If a one night stay would otherwise cost £12.50, you’d be getting ~0.31p per point.  Similar to an example I previously showed in Bangkok, Thailand, Hilton’s award pricing algorithm is reducing award prices to levels one might not expect, yet those prices are still not low enough to give you a reason to buy Hilton points… (click here to reread my article advising when to spend cash or redeem Hilton Honors points).

Bottom line

A Hilton hotel charging less than 5,000 points per night (or even less than 4,000!)? Somewhere you might actually want to visit / stay? It’s certainly a welcome surprise to see award pricing this low… (even though most of us cannot take advantage of it just yet).