Bottom Line
If you already lean towards Hilton Hotels when booking vacations, this is a card to have. Points can be used toward any of the 13 Hilton brands, including Hilton all-inclusive resorts. With the nice sign-up bonus and the weekend reward night, your next weekend away could cost you nothing at all. The $95 annual fee is reasonable if you want the Hilton Gold status, and can find ways to put gas, groceries, and restaurant spending on this card.
Why You Might Want This Card
Super Personal Card for Hilton Lovers
If you only qualify for personal cards, this is probably the Hilton card for you (at least to start). This card started as the "Ascend" card and has become the full grown "Surpass" card. Not much has changed in that evolution, but what has is for the better. The sign-up bonus is generous at 150,000 points (though be warned that a Hilton point is valued at around .7 cents per point). The devalued point is helped by some beefy spend multipliers with 6x points for gas, groceries and restaurants. And they there's a booming 12x points for every $1 spent on Hilton hotel stays. You also get complimentary Hilton Gold status -- which includes perks like room upgrades, complimentary breakfast, and one weekend reward night after spending $15,000 in a calendar year.
Check out our Hilton Honors page for more details on how to best use Hilton Points.
Exceptions To The Rule
About Hilton Honors
Hilton is a key component of the points strategy for hotel stays for 3 big reasons:
1. Points are easy to accumulate
2. They have locations in nearly every city globally
3. The perks are great for cardholders
Hilton currently has 4 different cards to choose from -- and they don’t have the strict limitations on carrying different cards as Marriott and Hyatt do. That could easily add up to 500,000 points per person over a few years, which equates to 20-25 hotel nights. The cards also have high multipliers... as high as 30x on Hilton spends, which can be coupled with membership bonuses and 5-7x on select categories and 3x on everyday spending.
Most Hilton cards also come with Gold status. That gives you room upgrades (really nice ones usually) and complimentary breakfast, along with all of the standard hotel membership bonuses.
The downfall of Hilton points is they’re not a good value for transfer. So unless you’re just topping off your points to have enough for booking, it isn’t a good value to transfer Amex Points to Hilton points.
Booking can be a little tricky, so utilize the Points Explorer Tool on their site.
Where Hilton Honors Surpass Amex Fits In This Point Ecosystem
Personal Experience
