Who doesn’t like luxurious travel, more so when it is free? Now that I have got your attention, let me tell you about my recent weekend trip at Double Tree, Hilton (Agra) during the festive season of Independence Day, and Rakshabandhan (2 nights) for free!
The property is stunning and 3km away from the Taj Mahal drop-off zone. However, I am sure you can google the details. Let’s cut to the chase how did I manage to book the property? Well, the answer is by using my Hilton Honors point!
How many points did I redeem?
It took me 80,000 Hilton Honors points to book 2 rooms for 2 nights which equates to 4 room nights at a rate of 20,000/night.
What’s the redemption rate?
The standard booking during that particular weekend was INR 9,400 per room per night (without taxes). If we include taxes the rate would be close to INR 11,092 which translates to INR 44,364 for the entire booking. While I used 80,000 which gave me a redemption rate of INR 0.5546/point which is quite decent!
Benefits of Membership?
Anyone can enroll for membership & it’s free. However, there are multiple tiers and one can attain them by staying at their properties. Currently, I am a “Silver” member which gives me the following additional perks:-
1. Members discount on room rates
2. Reference to select rooms (if available)
3. Early check-ins & late check-outs (if available)
4. Dedicated executive to address our needs
5. Members discount on food
6. Reserved seats and priority service during meals
How do you earn reward points?
The easiest way is to stay and earn, Hilton often has these promotional events where you can get up to 2x points and other bonuses.
Credit Cards to earn reward points?
Sadly there are no dedicated Hilton co-branded credit cards in India. However, Amex allows to transfer their Membership Rewards points to Hilton points at a rate of 1000:900, which may not be great but they sometimes run transfer bonuses which can help a lot.
Should you buy points?
Sometimes buying points can be optimal. For example, the wrack rate for Double Tree Muscat for 4 nights comes out to be INR 48,000 (approx after taxes). The same stay can be booked using 80,000 points (20,000 per night). The 80,000 points can be purchased for USD 400 which is roughly IR 35,000 (after conversation fees) which still gives you an effective discount of INR 13,000!!
If you want to apply for AMEX credit cards, please feel free to use my referral link: https://americanexpress.com/en-in/referral/gold?ref=pRASENlzGw&XL=MIANS
I will be covering other memberships and redemptions in my upcoming posts. Do follow and share if you want to up your rewards game!
The Enigmatic Pen 