Using Hilton Honors Points For Cruises
Last week DDG wrote about the new partnership between Hilton Honors and Explora Journeys, a premium cruise ship company. Like all of these recent travel partnerships – you earn some bonus Hilton Honors points on your bookings, get some extra perks and even get some discounted rates. The interesting thing with this partnership, for me at least, was using Hilton Honors points for cruises. Yes, you can book a cruise with your Hilton points now! The question that was left hanging in the air was just how bad of a redemption would it be?
Redemptions Are Now Live, But Not Great
I wanted to give the system a few days before diving in and seeing what kind of redemptions there would be. Like many partnerships, it appears that using Hilton Honors points to book Explora Journeys cruises comes with a set redemption rate. It isn’t variable pricing like you see when booking a Hilton Hotel with your points.
Sadly, the value appears to only be $0.002 per point. I was hoping for something a little bit better, but I am not surprised. Many people value Hilton Honors points at around $0.004 each, so this is about a 50% hair cut.
I do like that you can do a cash plus points booking (as seen pictured above). If you have a stash of Hilton points you could use what you have left, or the amount you want to use, and then pay the difference in cash. Similar to what is available to you when booking Hilton Honors hotels.
How Does This Compare To The Ever Raising Rates Of Top Tier Hilton Hotels?
On our recent podcast episode I said that some of the 4 night cruises were about double the cost of staying at a top tier Hilton property for 4 nights (250K per night). If you booked the lower end cruises for two people it would cost you around 2,000,000 Hilton Honors points. That does include all of your food AND many alcoholic drinks on Explora Journeys cruises. These ships do look really nice, so I guess I could see some people being willing to pay up in points if they have a large stash.
The fact that pretty much everything you would need to eat or drink on the trip is included could add a lot of value to close that gap. Would same pay double to price to have unlimited food and drinks at the Waldorf Astoria Cabo during their stay for instance? That is kind of what we are talking about here.
Using Hilton Honors Points For Cruises: Final Thoughts
While this will be a hard pass for 98% of people, I still like that we have another option to book cruises with points. Maybe they will run some promos in the future that offer a better deal. Cruises have always been difficult to book with points (outside of travel eraser cards), so it is nice to have another option. Even if it isn’t the most viable option. That is pretty much the territory that Virgin has run their cruise prices to in just a few years after launching.
Let me know if using Hilton Honors points to book a cruise would even be a consideration for you down below, or over in the MTM Facebook Group.
