Hilton Quietly Makes a Million-Point Change to Its Loyalty Program

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Via View From the Wing, Hilton has changed their loyalty program Terms & Conditions for the better!

You can now reinstate up to 1,000,000 expired Hilton points.  But you’ll need to make the request within 18 months after your points have expired.  I’ll give you the details!

Hilton Will Reinstate Your Expired Points

Link:   Hilton Honors Terms & Conditions

Hilton points will expire if your account hasn’t been active in 12 months.  Some things you can do to prevent your points from expiring are:

• Earn points by staying at a Hilton hotel, or using a co-branded Hilton credit card
• Earn points with the Hilton dining program or through the Hilton online shopping portal
• Transfer AMEX Membership Rewards, Hawaiian Airlines miles, or Virgin Atlantic miles to your Hilton account
• Buy Hilton points

Note:   Pooling Hilton points from family and friends does NOT keep them from expiring.

Previously, Hilton has not had an official policy to restore expired points.  But they’ve given folks reinstatement offers (for example, complete 4 stays in 1 year to earn your points back).  But Hilton has now updated their Terms & Conditions to include a section about reinstatement.  Here’s what you need to know:

• You can retrieve up to 1,000,000 expired Hilton points
• Only points that have expired in the past 18 months can be reinstated
• Only 1 reinstatement transaction per Hilton account
• Reinstated points do NOT count towards elite status

View From the Wing speculates that reinstating points will NOT cost any money.  And he has 1 data point to support that.  But the Terms & Conditions refer to the reinstatement as a “purchase”.  If you have any data points, I’d love to hear them! Update:   Thanks to reader Jack who let us know that it will cost $2.50 per 1,000 points to restore between 1,000 and 100,000 Hilton points.  And a flat rate of $250 to restore between 101,000 and 1,000,000 Hilton points!  And if you ask nicely enough, they just might restore them for free. 😉

One strange detail is that they did NOT communicate this change with Hilton Honors members!  It’s a positive change, after all.  And it’s a little unnerving that Hilton feels comfortable silently changing its Terms & Conditions (and backdating the changes to March 1, 2017!).

Want More Hilton Points?

There are lots of ways to earn Hilton points.  For example, you can transfer AMEX Membership Rewards points, Virgin Atlantic miles, and Hawaiian Airlines miles transfer to Hilton at a ratio of 2:3.

And you can apply for a Hilton co-branded credit card, like:

• Hilton Honors Card from American Express
• Hilton Honors™ Surpass® Card from American Express

Plus, AMEX will introduce 2 brand new Hilton credit cards, and refresh their 2 current Hilton cards, on January 18, 2018!

Bottom Line

Hilton now has an official policy on reinstating expired Hilton points.  Hilton will restore up to 1,000,000 expired points per Hilton Honors account.  But only points that have expired in the past 18 months can be reinstated.

This is good news for folks who rarely stay at Hilton hotels!  Though it’s extremely easy to keep points from expiring if you know a few tricks.

Let me know if you use this new policy to retrieve your expired points!