Why Transferring Membership Rewards to Hilton Just Makes Sense

In the points and miles community, the most common recommendation to people looking to use flexible points to book hotels is to transfer Chase Ultimate Rewards points to World of Hyatt. That’s because Hyatt award nights start at 5,000 points at the lowest category hotels and go up to 40,000 points at the highest tier. This makes for a great value of Chase Ultimate Rewards points.

But what if I told you there’s another option for booking hotels with flexible points that’s often overlooked? Would your first guess be transferring American Express Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors? Probably not, but let’s talk about why this is actually a great use of your Amex Membership Rewards.

Why Should You Transfer Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton

There are a few reasons that make transferring Membership Rewards to Hilton a great option. The transfer ratio, number of points required per night and the fifth night free perk all join forces to make this use of Amex points enticing.

Transfer Ratio from Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors

The standard transfer ratio between Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors points is 1:2, meaning for every 1,000 Amex Membership Rewards transferred you’ll get 2,000 Hilton Honors points. The ratio alone shouldn’t be the only reason you opt to move forward with a transfer, but in this case it definitely helps.

On occasion, you’ll find Amex offering a transfer bonus ranging from 30% to 50%, meaning you could get up to 3,000 Hilton Honors points by transferring just 1,000 Membership Rewards. This can happen a few times a year so it’s a good idea to wait for one of these transfer bonuses to come around before transferring your points.

Even without the transfer bonus ratio, the standard 1:2 transfer ratio beats out all the other point transfer opportunities to hotel programs, with the exception of Citi ThankYou Points that transfer to Choice Hotels at a 1:2 ratio. All other flexible point programs transfer to hotel partners 1:1, so we’re off to a pretty great start with the transfer ratio alone.

Of course, we can’t forget that the value of the point currency we’re converting flexible points into varies greatly across the hotel partners, so that brings us to the next reason that a transfer from Amex to Hilton should be something you consider—the number of points required per night.

Hilton Honors Points Required Per Night

For a standard room, Hilton requires 5,000 points per night for its lowest tier hotel and 95,000 points per night for the highest tier. While your first reaction may be to think that Hyatt’s award chart is much better since its award chart ranges from 5,000 points to 40,000 points per night, the math is going to make sense in a minute.

In this comparison scenario, we need to take into account the transfer ratios for both programs. As we just discussed, Amex transfers to Hilton at a 1:2 ratio, while Chase transfers to Hyatt at a 1:1 ratio.

Let’s say you’re considering the highest category hotels within both hotel programs. For Hyatt you need 40,000 points per night, and for Hilton you need 95,000 points per night. When you apply the transfer ratios, you need to transfer either 40,000 Chase Ultimate Rewards or 48,000 Amex Membership Rewards to book award nights at the highest category hotel in each program. Already we’ve almost leveled the playing field in terms of how many flexible points you would need.

We can repeat this comparison again using the increased Hilton transfer ratios during a transfer bonus period to find even more value in booking Hilton properties with Amex Membership Rewards.

Presume the transfer bonus is high enough for you to end up with 3,000 Hilton Honors points for every 1,000 Amex Membership Rewards points transferred. For the highest category Hilton hotel, you end up needing fewer flexible points than you would to book the highest category Hyatt hotel.

The takeaway after looking at this math is this: when booking lower tier hotels, Hilton wins over Hyatt any day based on the number of flexible points you’d need to transfer. If you’re booking a higher tier hotel, Hilton is the best choice during the transfer bonus periods.

This math makes sense when honing on the costs of just one night, but how does it hold up when we look at booking multiple nights?

Hilton’s Fifth Night Free Perk

For longer stays, Hilton’s fifth night free perk comes into play. Hilton has three elite status tiers— Silver, Diamond and Gold—and if you’re an elite member, you get the fifth night free on award stays (maximum of four free nights per 20-night stay is awarded). Hyatt doesn’t offer this perk, so you can expect to redeem more points for your fifth night.

Before we use this added perk to compare the cost of a five-night stay at a Hilton and at a Hyatt property, it’s important to understand how Hilton’s fifth night free works.

The number of points needed per night at a Hilton hotel can fluctuate based on demand. If not all nights within your stay cost the same number of points, Hilton will take the average number of points required for all five nights and deduct that amount from the total. For the sake of this comparison, we’ll assume that all five nights require the same number of points.

Now that we’ve set up the background, let’s see how Hyatt and Hilton compare.

To stay at the lowest tier Hyatt hotel for five nights, you need 25,000 World of Hyatt points, and to stay at the highest hotel category, you need 200,000 World of Hyatt points. When transferring from Chase, you need the exact number of Ultimate Rewards to transfer at a 1:1 ratio to Hyatt.

With Hilton, you would need 20,000 Hilton Honors points for a five-night stay at the lowest category. When transferring points from Amex at a 1:2 ratio, you need 10,000 Amex Membership Rewards for the lowest category hotel.

Looking at this breakdown, we can take away that when planning to book a longer stay, Hilton comes out ahead as the better transfer partner because you need to transfer fewer flexible points to make the booking. If we take it one step further and compare the rates during a transfer bonus period, it looks even better for Hilton.

When we take the transfer ratio into account, number of points needed per night and the free night perk, it looks like Hilton pulls ahead as the hotel program requiring you to use fewer flexible points and could get you more value out of your rewards. But before we make this definitive statement, let’s how it holds up in a real-world example.

A Couple of Real-World Examples

The best way to put these two programs head to head is to actually compare some real life examples. Just because Hilton has a top tier level hotel in one location doesn’t mean Hyatt will as well. Let’s put them head to head by comparing similar hotels in similar locations.

Mexico – Riviera Maya

Let’s start by looking at two comparable Hilton and Hyatt properties in Riviera Maya, Mexico: Hyatt’s Andaz Mayakoba Resort and Hilton’s Conrad Tulum.

For a five-night stay at the Hyatt property, you’d need 29,000 points per night or 145,000 points for the full stay. Based on the cash price of the hotel (before taxes and fees), you’d have a redemption rate of 1.6 cents per flexible point.

For a five-night stay at the Conrad, you’d need 90,000 points per night or 360,000 points for five nights using the fifth night free perk. If you’re transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors at the standard transfer ratio of 1:2, you’d need 180,000 Membership Rewards, leading to a redemption rate of 1.5 cent per flexible point.

In this scenario, Hilton loses to Hyatt in both the number of points required for the redemption and the redemption rate.

For a five-night stay at the Hyatt property, you’d need 29,000 points per night or 145,000 points for the full stay. Based on the cash price of the hotel (before taxes and fees), you’d have a redemption rate of 1.6 cents per flexible point.

For a five-night stay at the Conrad, you’d need 90,000 points per night or 360,000 points for five nights using the fifth night free perk. If you’re transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors at the standard transfer ratio of 1:2, you’d need 180,000 Membership Rewards, leading to a redemption rate of 1.5 cent per flexible point.

In this scenario, Hilton loses to Hyatt in both the number of points required for the redemption and the redemption rate.

However, if we look at this exact scenario during a promotional period when the transfer ratio between Amex Membership Rewards and Hilton Honors is 1:3, Hilton quickly pulls ahead, requiring only 120,000 Amex Membership Rewards for the five-night stay with a redemption rate of 2.3 cents per flexible point.

Australia – Sydney

A stay at the Hyatt Regency Sydney requires 20,000 points per night or 100,000 points for five nights. This results in a redemption rate of 0.8 cents per point.

A stay at the Hilton property, the West Hotel Sydney, Curio Collection by Hilton, costs 42,000 Hilton points per night or 168,000 points for five nights using the fifth night free perk.

If you’re transferring from Amex with the standard transfer ratio of 1:2, you’d need only 84,000 Amex Membership Rewards and you’d have a redemption value of 1 cent per flexible point. If you’re able to transfer during a promotional period when the transfer ratio is 1:3, you need only 56,000 Amex Membership Rewards, which improves the redemption rate to 1.5 cents per flexible point.

So far, the theory that Hilton is the better choice for higher tier hotels holds up, especially during times when the Amex to Hilton transfer ratio is increased to 1:3.

Putting It Into Context

However, in our real-world scenario,where Hilton starts to fall short is with lower tier hotels. For an easy comparison, within the United States, no Hilton hotels are available for under 10,000 Hilton points per night, but you can book nearly 500 Hyatt hotels for fewer than 10,000 points per night.

This means that even though the math we worked through earlier shows that booking a lower tier Hilton would require fewer flexible points than booking a Hyatt, you have to actually be able to find a lower-tier Hilton to make it true.

Keep in mind that the Hilton fifth night free benefit is available to elite members only. Because you have to hold status with the hotel to take advantage of the free night, it’s not going to benefit all Hilton guests equally. Consider this before you transfer flexible points to the program. That being said, many cards will grant you automatic status with Hilton, so it isn’t that hard to get. Don’t forget that you can also stretch your points to cover more of your vacation by staying at a Hilton all inclusive property.

Other Reasons to Consider Hilton Over Hyatt

If you’re looking for reasons beyond using fewer points to choose Hilton for your next hotel booking, you may want to consider its larger hotel portfolio and the ease with which you can earn high-level status.

Hilton has nearly 6,500 properties in 119 countries, while Hyatt is far behind with about 1,000 properties in 69 countries. Both hotel programs are likely to have a presence in destinations most travelers want to visit, but it’s more likely that you’d find a Hilton property and no Hyatt in an area than a Hyatt without a Hilton nearby.

Both hotel programs offer great perks at their highest level of status—Hilton Diamond and Hyatt Globalist—such as possible suite upgrades, late checkout and free breakfast or food credits. However, the big difference is in how easy it is to earn these status tiers.

Hyatt requires you to stay 60 qualifying nights in a year, while Hilton requires only 42 qualifying nights. For an even easier way to earn Hilton Diamond status, open the Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card.

In comparison, Hyatt doesn’t offer Globalist status via any of its co-branded credit cards.

Final Thoughts

It’s hard to come to terms with the idea that transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards to Hyatt might not be the only option when booking hotels with flexible points. That’s why we rely on the math, and in this case, the math tells us that when booking higher end hotels, transferring Amex Membership Rewards to Hilton is a better move, especially when the transfer ratio is 1:3.

The combination of the increased transfer ratio and the fifth night free perk often mean you’ll need fewer flexible points when booking with Hilton.

It doesn’t hurt that with Hilton’s much larger hotel portfolio, you’re more likely to find one in the destination you’re visiting and that it’s much easier to earn Hilton Diamond status than Hyatt Globalist.

It’s time to expand beyond Hyatt when preparing to use your flexible points for hotel bookings. While it’s not always the case, booking with Hilton can often save you flexible points and deliver a better redemption rate. But like many things in life, do your comparison shopping because it often comes down to location, location, location.