[Updated 2025.11] Starting 2026.1.1, Hilton will adjust its elite tiers and add a new Diamond Reserve status! It appears the benefits for the other tiers are unchanged; the main differences are lower stay requirements to qualify and a new spending-based path.

The new Diamond Reserve requirements are as follows. The most useful perk seems to be seeing a confirmed upgrade at the time of booking. If you book a refundable rate and do not see an upgrade, you can simply try a different hotel or date. That said, there do not appear to be many truly substantial added benefits. For example, perks like free night certificates or bonus points would probably do more to motivate members to aim for it.

  • To earn or renew Diamond Reserve, members need 80 nights or 40 stays, plus $18000USD in spending (after this change, about 4% of members will qualify for Diamond Reserve)
  • Guaranteed upgrade at the time of booking (one category, potentially even to a suite)
  • Guaranteed late checkout until 16:00 (more useful outside the U.S.)
  • Dedicated customer support (exclusive member service line)
  • 120% points bonus

About Hilton Hotels

Hilton was founded in 1919 in Texas, United States. Today, it has around 5000 hotels and resorts worldwide, spanning 13 hotel and resort brands. Hilton International (HI), a division of the Hilton group headquartered in the United Kingdom, holds the rights to use the “Hilton” trademark outside the United States. In the U.S., Hilton hotels are owned and managed by Hilton Hotels Corporation (HHC). As a global hotel group, Hilton offers hotel and resort brands that serve travelers across different budgets and age groups:

hilton

Loyalty Program

Elite Tiers

Hilton has the following four membership tiers, with the requirements below:

  • Member (entry-level status; just sign up)
  • Sivler: 10 nights, or 4 stays, or 25,000 Base Points
  • Gold: 40 nights, or 20 stays, or 75,000 Base Points
  • Diamond: 60 nights, or 30 stays, or 120,000 Base Points
  • Lifetime Diamond: 10 years as a Hilton Diamond member (not necessarily consecutive), plus 1000 paid nights

Here, base points refers to the base points earned from Hilton spending. For every $1 spent, you earn 10 Hilton base points. So in theory, Diamond only requires $12,000 in spending. Nights are counted night by night, while stays means one continuous stay at the same hotel counts as a single stay no matter how many nights it includes.

Also, if you want to make sure you receive the correct points/eligible nights/stays, booking through Hilton’s official channels is the most important and safest approach. Bookings through Citi Prestige via CWT, AMEX FHR, and CSP/CSR sapphire travel bookings are more likely to count. Reservations made through other third-party websites, such as Hotels.com, Booking.com, Priceline.com, etc., generally do not earn points, Eligible Nights, or stays.

Elite Benefits

The benefits for Hilton elite members include the following, with some especially useful ones listed below:

  • 5th night free on award stays: available starting at Silver
  • Dining credit (within the U.S.) or continental breakfast (outside the U.S.): available starting at Gold, and very useful. In particular, breakfast at Hilton properties in China is often excellent.
  • Executive lounge access: available at Diamond and above
  • Room upgrades: Gold usually gets a one-category upgrade, while Diamond may be upgraded to a suite

Status Match and Challenge

Besides earning elite status the traditional way through stays, status match and challenge offers are also an important path. Basically, if you hold elite status with another hotel program and meet a certain Hilton stay requirement within a set period, you can quickly obtain Hilton elite status.

The current offer is 7 nights within 90 days to receive Gold through 2024.3.31, and 12 nights to receive Diamond.

The steps for matching are shown below, although it does not specify which tier from other hotel groups is required for a successful match. In any case, just submit the highest status you have.

Credit Cards That Include Status

In fact, the easiest way to get elite status is simply by holding the right credit card. Hilton is quite generous here: several cards give you Gold status outright, and the Aspire even gives top-tier Diamond status directly.

Introduction to the Hilton Honors Loyalty Program

Hilton currently has about 5,000 hotels and resorts worldwide across 13 hotel and resort brands. Gold and Diamond members can enjoy free breakfast, along with possible room upgrades.

  • Points value: The average value is 0.4 c/p, 100 Hilton = $0.4 (Points Valuation & Analysis). In other words, a hotel stay worth $40 would require about 10k Hilton points to redeem.
  • How to redeem: You can search and book directly on hilton.com. Hilton has now completely eliminated hotel award categories, and the number of points required is based on the current cash price. Most redemptions fall in the 0.3–0.5 c/p range. If you redeem points for four consecutive nights, you can get the fifth night free, meaning five nights cost only 80% of the usual points.
  • Points features: If there is no activity in your account for 24 months, your points will expire. Hilton supports family point pooling, allowing multiple accounts to combine points for use together. In addition, each person can transfer 50k points to others per year and receive up to 200k Hilton points (excluding family pooling).
  • My take: To get outsized value from Hilton points, it often makes sense to target lower-priced hotels that still have reasonable award rates. For example, many Hilton properties in China have consistently offered good redemption value. You can also use points for hotels near major attractions or during special periods, such as New Year’s Eve in Times Square or trips to Hawaii. Also, it is best to aim for “stay four, get one free” or “stay five for the price of four” style redemptions whenever possible. Hilton has a very broad footprint and a large number of properties in the U.S., making the points easy to use. Combined with family pooling and point transfer features, it is also relatively easy to top off your balance.

Credit Cards

Points Pooling

NEW! Hilton now allows members to pool points with up to 10 friends or family members, with no fee for sharing points.

Point Value

We generally value Hilton points at 0.4 cents/point, which means 10,000 points are worth about $40. There are two main reasons for this:

  • When redeeming for hotels, a property that costs around $100 on average often requires 25,000 Hilton points
  • Hilton frequently runs buy-one-get-one-style promotions on points, such as 10,000 points plus another 10,000 points for $100

How to Earn Points

Although Hilton points are not as valuable as points from programs like Hyatt, they are much easier to earn. Hotel stays and credit cards can both generate large amounts of points. Below are some of the most common ways to earn Hilton points:

Earning Points from Hotel Stays

No matter what elite tier a Hilton Honors member has, as long as they complete an eligible stay at any participating Hilton property, they can earn points. The points earned fall into two categories: Base Points and Bonus Points. These two types of points are treated the same for redemption purposes, but only Base Points count toward earning and renewing Silver, Gold, and Diamond status.

Base Points: These come from the room rate and other eligible room charges (that is, charges shown on the folio, including phone charges, dining charges, etc.). At most properties, you can earn 10 Base Points per $1 spent, but at certain Hilton brands such as Home2 Suites, you can earn only 5 Base Points per $1 spent. One thing worth noting: if you have dining charges during a Hilton stay, you can earn points on them as long as they are charged to your room bill. However, if you only have dining spend without staying at the hotel and without charging it to a room, that spending will not earn points.

Bonus Points include:

  • Promotional bonus points: for example, double points or multiple points during promotions. After registering for an offer and completing the required tasks during the promo period, you can earn extra points;
  • Points earned from dining, linking accounts, and various other promotions or activities
  • Extra bonus points on each stay for Silver, Gold, and Diamond members

Buying Points

Buying points directly is undoubtedly the most straightforward way to earn Hilton points. There are two channels: buying directly from Hilton and buying through a third-party platform.

When buying directly from Hilton (on the my account page, there is a my points section on the left; click more ways to use points, and a page will pop up with a purchase option), the price is $12.5 per 1,000 points if you buy fewer than 10,000 points in one transaction, and $10 per 1,000 points if you buy 10,000 points or more. However, note that purchases are limited to 70,000 points per calendar year.

That said, it is usually best to wait for Hilton’s recurring points sales. Almost every year there is a promotion with an extra 100% bonus, which is effectively like buying at half price. The main advantage of buying through Hilton is speed: the purchased points usually post to your account immediately. According to the membership terms, if there is no activity in your account for one year, your accumulated points will expire automatically. In that case, buying points to extend the validity of your balance can be a smart move.

The advantage of buying points through third-party platforms is that the price is often lower than Hilton’s standard direct-purchase price. For example, during American Express’s Daily Getaways promotion, usually around March or April each year, 100,000 points may sell for just $500, which works out to only $5 per 1,000 points—half of Hilton’s regular price. The downside is obvious as well: the purchased points do not post immediately and may take several weeks to arrive.

One important note: no matter which channel you use to buy points, purchased points do not count toward earning or renewing Gold or Diamond status.

Earning Points with Co-Branded Credit Cards

Earning points through credit cards is another great option. Not only can you get a large number of Hilton points from a welcome bonus after meeting the minimum spending requirement, but if you are a Hilton fan, using a Hilton co-branded card for everyday spending can also help you build your balance. The following two cards—especially the Aspire—can offer excellent long-term value.

Apply now

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AMEX Hilton Aspire Credit Card

Complimentary top-tier Hilton Diamond status! Up to $600 in annual airline and hotel credits, plus a free night reward every year!

  • Welcome bonus: 150,000 Hilton points (spend $6,000 in six months)
  • Rewards: 14x on Hilton hotel purchases, 7x on flights, dining, and car rentals, and 3x on all other purchases
  • Redemption: Redeemable at Hilton properties worldwide
  • Annual fee: $550
  • Apply now>>

Transferring Other Points to Hilton

Points from other bank programs, hotel programs, and airline programs can also be transferred into Hilton points. Transfer options include:

  • AMEX Membership Rewards (MR) -> HH = 1 -> 1.5
  • Citi ThankYou Points (TYP) -> HH = 1 -> 1.5
  • Virgin Atlantic -> HH = 1 -> 2

*Since MR can be transferred to Virgin Atlantic at 1:1, if you are not in a hurry, you can transfer to Virgin Atlantic first and then to HH, effectively achieving 1:2.

Still, given the relatively low value of Hilton points, this is not something we use very often. But if you are just a little short of the points needed for the fifth-night-free benefit, transferring some points over may be worthwhile. Also, transfer bonuses do come up from time to time. For example, both Citi and AMEX have previously offered transfer bonuses to HH. So if you have an immediate need for Hilton points, transferring can still make sense.

Redeeming Points

Redeeming for Hotel Award Stays

Hilton has completely eliminated its Award Categories system, so there is no fixed award chart anymore. Pricing is now dynamic. Broadly speaking, the higher the cash price of a hotel, the more points are required. Hilton also has one notable quirk: once standard award inventory is gone, the points required for other room types can become outrageously high. So do not be surprised if you see properties pricing at well over 100,000 points per night. Also, if you book five consecutive nights with points, you only pay points for the first four nights and the fifth night is free. So if possible, try to save up enough points for this kind of booking.

If you search around, straightforward redemptions generally come out to about 0.3 c/p to 0.37 c/p in value. But considering that award stays do not have taxes and fees, and also factoring in the fifth-night-free benefit, a rough valuation of around 0.4 c/p is reasonable.

In addition, Hilton can quietly make dynamic adjustments to the number of points required, and we have no way of knowing ahead of time what those numbers will be. That is essentially a form of stealth devaluation. So if you have Hilton points, it may be wise to use more of them sooner rather than later.

Points + Cash Redemptions

Hilton now allows Points + Cash bookings. You can use a slider-like tool to decide how many points or how much cash to use, with a minimum of 5,000 points per night. You can decide based on your own valuation of Hilton points, but my suggestion is that if you have enough points, it is usually better to use up your points first.

Other Uses

  • Use points to shop on Amazon: The redemption rate is 0.2 c/p, which is very poor value and generally not recommended unless you no longer care about your Hilton account.
  • You can also redeem points for vacation packages, all-inclusive resorts, golf rewards, airline or rail miles, car rentals, cruise vouchers, or statement-style credits toward online shopping and dining. These are generally terrible values. It is enough just to know these options exist and move on. (For example, 10,000 Hilton points can be redeemed for only 1000 UA miles.)

Hilton’s Best Rate Guarantee (BRG)

BRG Overview

What is BRG? It stands for Best Rate Guarantee. In other words, Hilton guarantees that it can match the lowest third-party booking rate available in the market, which effectively encourages members to book directly through Hilton. Hilton’s BRG has a few unique advantages:

  • First, Hilton matches your rate to the lower rate you found on a third-party website
  • Then, on top of that lower rate, you can still get an additional 25% off

How to Use BRG

1. Check rates: Compare Hilton’s rate with rates on other websites. In general, the third-party site should be in English. I recommend tripadvisor.com here, since Hilton does not seem to accept Chinese-language third-party sites.

2. Take screenshots of the rates on each website: Be sure to compare the hotel name, address, stay dates, number of guests, room type, whether breakfast is included, cancellation policy, and so on. Only when everything is exactly the same should you take screenshots for your records. (Sometimes a hotel may have only one room left. If you book it on Hilton’s website first, the other site may no longer show availability. Without screenshots as proof, you may not be able to make a BRG claim. So always save screenshots first.)

3. Book the hotel on Hilton’s website: Once you have checked the rates, do not hesitate—go ahead and book directly on Hilton’s site.

4. Go to Hilton’s BRG page: the Hilton BRG claim page.

5. Wait for their email response. There are two possible outcomes. First, if the lower rate is still available on the website, they will directly adjust your price. Second, they may tell you the rate is no longer available and that you cannot use the Best Rate Guarantee. In that case, email them your screenshot evidence. Hotels will generally honor it—in most cases customer service accepts screenshots, and that is one advantage of Hilton’s Best Rate Guarantee.

6. Wait for their confirmation email. Customer service will send the updated reservation to your email inbox. Keep it محفوظ?