 We wrote about Hilton Honors Aspire resort credit of $250 applicable to dining purchases going live on 06/01/2020 here. So, if you have not used your Hilton resort credit for the current year from now to 08/31/2020 is the best time to use your Hilton Honor's aspire card for the any dining purchase. The important point was that you can use that credit towards takeout / delivery service providers such as Grubhub, UberEats. DoorDash etc. This allows for potentially using these delivery service with any promotion's they present along with any points, cashback earning potential through various cashback sites or hotel programs.
So, below are the few things you can do to maximize your points/cashback for the reimbursed $250 dining credit on your Hilton Honors Aspire card (If you have not already used your resort credit!!).
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 Due to COVID-19 situation lot of travel related credit card's with high annual fees are innovating and throwing in temporary statement credit redemption options. Hilton Aspire credit card comes with $250 resort credit each card member year for purchases at participating Hilton Resorts. They are making good on those credits by allowing to redeem them against restaurant charges for a short window from June 1st to Aug 31st 2020. Hilton Aspire is a great card with benefits worth its high fees of $450 if you are travel geek. Having an alternate option to redeem those $250 in resort credit's for restaurant purchases (including Grubhub / Seamless, UberEats etc) makes the credit card compelling and the one which you should hold on or can apply for here. Also the free annual weekend night which can be used at any property except few here is a great value. Below is the snapshot of the modified benefits of the card as per American Express. Also the terms are below for completeness.  American Express Hilton Aspire modified benefits  American Express Hilton Aspire Resort Credit Terms. As you can see you already earn 12 Hilton Honor Points at U.S. Supermarkets as modified benefit for time being. In addition you might notice additional point earning offers such as below on your "Amex Offers" which would make it useful card even in time of No travel.  New: Earning additional Hilton Honors points targeted to merchant Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.
 As Lyft expands its service in the United States it is also expanding the partnership where you can earn miles and points as well as cashback for the rides taken with them. You do need to link up your mileage or points earning account to earn miles and points. Below are the current partnership where lyft provides potential to earn miles/points.
JetBlue Lyft Partnership: JetBlue offers existing Lyft users opportunity to earn JetBlue points for rides to/from airport. You need to link your JetBlue account with lyft. For every ride taken you earn 30 JetBlue points. Although those are small amount of points they are free. More details can be found here. Delta Lyft Partnership: Delta Airlines has also partnered with Lyft where you earn 1 mile/$ for non-airport rides and 2 miles/$ for airport rides for exiting Lyft users. This has potential of earning variable amount of Delta Airlines miles depending on the cost of the ride you take. You need to link your Delta Airlines account with Lyft to start earning. More details can be found here. Hilton Lyft Parnership: Hilton Hotels has partnered with Lyft where you earn 2 points/$ on shared ride and 3 points/$ on all other Lyft rides. You can earn variable amount of Hilton Honor points based on the spend. You need to link your Hilton Honors account with Lyft to start earning. More details on this partnership can be found here. Earn Cashback with Ebates App: Although not a significant amount you can earn cashback for every ride you take with Lyft while launching the Lyft App from Ebates App and booking your ride. As of this writing Ebates is offering $0.25 per ride but in the past it has been as high as $1. So, if you have cashback account with Ebates it would be nice to earn cashback for the ride you are going to take anyway. More details can be found on this blog post. When linking the accounts make sure you enter the names correctly. For e.g. Delta Airlines webpage will throw error if you do not enter correct name as per your Delta Airlines Mileage account. So, get going and link your accounts today so you earn the miles/points on JetBlue, Delta and Hilton. Also do remember the cash back through Ebates App. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.  Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months of inactivity (either earning or redeeming). To avoid the expiration you need to have activity on your account. There are many available ways to extend that expiration for another 12 months, but here we want to list the quick and easy ways to keep those points alive.
Shop with points with Amazon: Hilton provides an ability to redeem your points at Amazon. You can redeem 500 points for $1 spent on Amazon (which is a poor value if your sole purpose to use it for spending on Amazon). The good news is you can use this way to extend the expiration of your points. The best way is to purchase a $1 Amazon e-gift card sent to yourself or anyone you want to. Although Hilton advertises that you need to use minimum of 500 points, at the time of this writing you can pay partially as well by redeeming just 5 points for $0.01 on that purchase. The remaining $0.99 can be paid with any of your credit card. Hilton provides more details on this partnership here. Transfer points to your friends or family: Hilton allows points transfer free of cost. You can transfer up-to 500,000 points in a year to a single person in a year. That's a good amount of transfer without any cost. You can transfer the points to a person who has any recent Hilton Honors account activity (In last 12 months) or has various Amex Hilton Cards. More details can be found here. Transfer American Express Membership Reward Points: If you have any Amex Membership Reward Points earning card then you can use that to transfer 1,000 Membership Reward Points to 2,000 Hilton Honors points. This will extend your Hilton Honors points for another 12 months. Also, American Express occasionally has transfer bonuses as well such as current targeted bonus of 10% to 50% for points transfer to Hilton, but in any case you will need to transfer minimum of 1,000 Membership Reward points. You can begin your transfer here. So, above 3 are the quick ways to get your Hilton Honors points secured for another 12 months. Disclaimer: Some of the links used in the post may be referral links and earn referral to this site. We appreciate you supporting the website.  If you stay in the USA and can sign up for credit cards then the one card you should have in your wallet is the American Express Hilton Card. American Express has two variants of the card below: If you do not have Hilton HHonors card then it is better off to start with the $75 annual fee version as apart from better benefits it also has higher sign up bonus such as the current 100k Hilton Honors point for $3k spend in 3 months and a free weekend night earned after first anniversary of the card membership.
After first anniversary of the Hilton HHonors Surpass card once you receive the free weekend night certificate you can downgrade the card to No annual fee Hilton HHonors card. The Deal:
Disclosure: Miles And Money could earn referral bonus for sign up through some of the links above. Some of the links may or may not be publicly available links.  The Daily Getaways has returned and will be starting on May 19th, 2014. It used to have quite a few lucrative deals, but seems due to the seasons of devaluation it has lost its sheen. The first and second week of deals are announced and it does not sound interesting.
Week 0 -- May 19th to May 23rd:
Week 1 -- May 26th to May 30th:
 As you keep collecting hotel program points for reward stays it's worth understanding the value you are getting out of your investment. Everyone has a different value on points they hold and in which program the points are available. But knowing what value you can get of those points is of importance. The intend of this post is to highlight different program "sweet spots" so you know your choices and where to look before deciding to use your points for hotel award night stay. The loyalty programs we will be looking at are listed below: This article will focus on Hyatt Gold Passport and Hilton Honors. For IHG (Priority Club) refer to my post on IHG Big Win. The value proposition for IHG (Priority Club) comes from Point Savers Award. For details on Marriott, Club Carlson and SPG do check my next article in this series. Hyatt Gold Passport Most hotels in Hyatt brand represent high tier and luxury class hotels. Hyatt award night starts from mere 5k points for category 1 hotels and the highest category 6 hotels cost 22k points for standard room. The reward chart representing the hotels in different categories can be found here. The category 6 hotels include Park Hyatt Tokyo, Park Hyatt Maldives and Park Hyatt Sydney that retails upwards of $900+. Thus redeeming 22k points for standard room at this hotels is extremely awesome value proposition if you are looking for Style and grand experience. On the lower end of it you could redeem 5k points for hotels such as Bali Hyatt which goes for ~$120+. So if you are looking to stay at decent to good brand hotel, I would suggest looking at Category 1 & 2 hotels to see if any hotels exits for the destination you are planning to visit which provides great redemption value for award nights rather than paying cash.  Hyatt Award Night Categories Hilton Honors Although Hilton has massively devalued their program in recent time by increasing award night redemption cost's almost 2x and introducing variable points reward rate based on seasonality; there are still quite a few value hotels for budget conscious travelers who want to experience Hilton brand. You should use this useful tool here to determine how many points are required for standard room stay at the location you plan to visit. Once you know the points, you can visit the brand hotel website and scroll all the way to the bottom to see the award night rate for your stay. Look at the example below for Double Tree Hilton Goa. The Hotel's average night cost is INR 11,000 which would roughly equate to ~$180 but the points cost is only 5k points. That's awesome value proposition for Hilton Honors points.  Hilton Points Category  Hilton Goa for 5k Points in November and December As you can see from above it is still a good value proposition redeeming Hilton Honor points for lower category hotels and thus maximizing value of your points for free award night stays.
So in short if you are looking for value from above programs look for lower or mid category hotels in Hyatt and lower category hotels in Hilton Honors program |
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