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We are an independent publisher. Our reporters create honest, accurate, and objective content to help you make decisions. To support our work, we are paid for providing advertising services. Many, but not all, of the offers and clickable hyperlinks (such as a “Next” button) that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. The compensation we receive and other factors, such as your location, may impact what ads and links appear on our site, and how, where, and in what order ads and links appear. While we strive to provide a wide range of offers, our site does not include information about every product or service that may be available to you. We strive to keep our information accurate and up-to-date, but some information may not be current. So, your actual offer terms from an advertiser may be different than the offer terms on this site. And the advertised offers may be subject to additional terms and conditions of the advertiser. All information is presented without any warranty or guarantee to you.

This page may include: credit card ads that we may be paid for (“advertiser listing”); and general information about credit card products (“editorial content”). Many, but not all, of the offers and clickable hyperlinks (such as a “Apply Now” button or “Learn More” button) that appear on this site are from companies that compensate us. When you click on that hyperlink or button, you may be directed to the credit card issuer’s website where you can review the terms and conditions for your selected offer. Each advertiser is responsible for the accuracy and availability of its ad offer details, but we attempt to verify those offer details. We have partnerships with advertisers such as Brex, Capital One, Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo and Discover. We also include editorial content to educate consumers about financial products and services. Some of that content may also contain ads, including links to advertisers’ sites, and we may be paid on those ads or links.

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Hilton Launches New Points Explorer – Still Less Useful Than an Award Chart

February 7, 2019 By Jason Stauffer

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One of the more annoying things about Hilton’s loyalty program is that they no longer publish an award chart. This means they can adjust the award price as much as they like whenever they want. Obviously that’s handy for the hotel, but not so much for you and me.

Now Hilton has introduced the “Points Explorer” tool, which looks like it could be helpful. I’m all about paying fewer Hilton points for a free night, but I’m not sure how much of a time saver it is compared to just searching for award nights on Hilton’s website.

Hilton has introduced the “Points Explorer” which is sorta like an award chart…only worse

Hilton Points Explorer Tool

The Points Explorer is supposed to show you the most or least you could pay for an award night at a particular hotel. This is how Hilton determines what those prices are:

Lowest Points per night that our members have booked at this hotel as of 01-12-2019. Current Points per night may vary. Maximum Points per night for a Standard Room as of 01-12-2019. Subject to change.

Basically, Hilton is admitting that the Points Explorer won’t always be accurate. So it’s better to think of it as a guideline. Nick, from Frequent Miler, did a few simple searches and found award prices at one hotel that were 25,000 points less than the lowest price listed by the Points Maximizer!

It’s interesting that it’s a crowd sourced award chart, which in theory should make it more practical since it only displays prices of actual award bookings. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what someone else booked an award for. It only matters what you end up paying. And if you can find potentially cheaper prices just by searching Hilton’s website, then why bother with the extra step of using the Points Explorer?

If you want to play around with the Points Explorer yourself, you can check it out here.

Is there something I’m missing or is this actually as useless as it seems?

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Points and Miles

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