The Hilton Honors Dining Rewards program is another great way to earn additional Hilton points. Plus, you’ll also receive 5,000 bonus points for joining the program as a new customer!
Overview
Many people assume that the only way you can earn loyalty points is by booking a stay directly with a participating hotel.
If that was true, it would take the majority of travelers ages before they earn enough hotel points to redeem for free nights. Luckily for us, that isn’t the case. There are a ton of opportunities to earn hotel points.
For Hilton’s loyalty program, called Hilton Honors, you can earn points not only for staying at Hilton hotel brands, but also from affiliated credit card spending and sign up bonuses, transferring from other rewards programs, Hilton travel partners, and the Hilton Honors Dining program.
Hilton Honors Dining Rewards Program
Hilton Honors Dining program will allow you to earn extra Hilton Honors points at participating restaurants.
All you have to do is connect your favorite credit card(s) that you use for restaurant spending to the dining program. Then, when you use one of those cards at a participating restaurant, you’ll automatically earn extra Hilton Honors points.
New Customer Promotion
Hilton currently has a special promotion where you’ll earn 5,000 Hilton Honors bonus points by joining the Hilton Honors Dining rewards program and spending a minimum of $25 at a participating restaurant or bar. You also must complete a post dine review within 30 days of dining.
Their normal new customer bonus is merely 2,000 points and requires multiple reviews. This more than doubles the Hilton points you can earn while cutting down the amount of reviews to just one.
Hilton Points
What Can I Use Hilton Points For?
Hilton Honors is a hotel loyalty program, so naturally you can redeem them for free nights at Hilton hotels worldwide. A bonus is you’ll get a free 5th night when redeeming points for a stay of 5 or more nights. This caps out at 20 nights in length – during which you’d enjoy 4 free nights.
Additionally, you can use them in other ways as well, including:
- Redeem Hilton Honors Points For Travel Experiences
- Transfer Hilton Honors Points To Airlines
- Use Hilton Honors Points for Amazon Purchases
I would recommend only using Hilton points exclusively for free award nights at Hilton hotels because you’ll get less value on a per point basis with the other options.
How Much Are Hilton Points Worth?
I value each Hilton point at 0.5 cents per point on average. Formally, as a dollar metric, it would be shown as $0.005.
Generally, the best way to realize this value is by booking free award nights at Hilton hotels. Other uses of Hilton points doesn’t stretch your points as far as hotel night redemptions will.
To illustrate this, we’ll compare the value of using Hilton points for a free award night compared to using it for Amazon purchases.
Hilton Free Night Redemption
Let’s pretend we want to book a night at the Millennium Times Square New York to celebrate the new year (everyone needs a celebration with the way 2020 has turned out).
For New Year’s Eve, you can either pay $290 for the room or redeem 56,000 Hilton points for a free night.
To calculate the value of this specific redemption, simply divide $290 over 56,000 points (290/56,000) and you’d get $0.005 – which is half a cent per point.
Amazon Purchases
To use your Hilton points to cover Amazon purchases, you need to link your Hilton Honors account to Amazon and select Hilton Honors points as your payment method at checkout.
Amazon will tell you how many points it takes to cover your order – you can use your points to cover the whole or part of a purchase.
But should you use Hilton points for Amazon purchases?
Here’s what the Amazon checkout screen showed when I put a product that cost $15.30 into my shopping cart:
That means that in order to cover $15.30 worth of purchases at Amazon, you’d need to use 7,652 points. Dividing $15.30 over 7,652 points (15.30/7,652) produces $0.002 – which is two-tenths of a cent.
That’s less than half the value you’d get from using your Hilton points for a free night award.
So, based on my research, you should never use Hilton points at Amazon.
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The Bottom Line
The Hilton Honors Dining rewards program is another way to earn Hilton points faster. The new customer sign up bonus is more than double the normal amount, so if you’re not part of Hilton’s loyalty program yet, now is a great time to join!
