I Didn’t Know Hilton Honors Allowed This Great Option

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When Sharon married me, I’m not sure she knew that she would unwittingly become Player Two in my quest to earn as many travel points and miles as possible. Not only could she get all the credit cards I’d already applied for, but she also had access to business cards I had skipped, as she was an independent contractor with the 1099s to prove it.

Now that we’ve been doing this for over 15 years, there are loyalty programs where we both have points, but not enough in either account for a redemption we want. This is what happened when I tried to use my Hilton Honors points, but I was just short of the points I needed to pay for the room.

Hilton is not our preferred hotel chain (here’s a breakdown of where we stayed the most in 2023), but I earned points from my work trips in 2019. Hilton extended points through the pandemic, but they’ve brought back the point expiration policy. I haven’t had a transaction in almost 2 years, so my Hilton points would expire unless I had some activity in my account. Instead of making a transaction to extend my points, I decided that it would be better to use them instead.

I found a hotel in New York, that would work for an upcoming trip, for 80,000 points a night. We are staying for 2 nights, but I only have 150,000 points in my Honors account. Sharon has points in her account because she has the Hilton Surpass AMEX card, but how could I use those points? Fortunately, Hilton allows members of the Honors program to transfer points between accounts for no charge.

Transferring Hilton Honors Points

I first tried to pool points, but I decided to transfer the 10,000 points I needed from her account to mine. To start the process, make sure you are logged into the Hilton Honors account that you want to transfer the points from. In this instance, I needed to log into Sharon’s account.

There was some red tape to clear, but there was nothing to worry about when transferring 10,000 points.

Hilton Honors Members can transfer Hilton Honors Points to another Hilton Honors Member through Points Pooling or 1-to-1 transfer in increments of 1,000 points and up to 500,000 points. Each Hilton Honors Member is limited to sending no more than 500,000 points and receiving 2,000,000 points via Points Pooling or Transfers combined per calendar year. Each Hilton Honors Member is limited to making six transfers to other member accounts and six Hilton Points Pooling transactions per calendar year.

It took a few minutes, but eventually, I had 160,000 points in my account, which was enough for 2 nights in Manhattan.

The two-night stay would cost $882, so I’m getting more than the 1/2 cent value that I give to Hilton Honors points.

Final Thought

When you have two people with accounts in the same program, it’s not unusual to use one account more than the other. With Hilton Honors, we use Sharon’s account because she has a co-brand credit card and earns more points in the program. I had points in my account for several years, and when they were close to expiring, I had to either use them or find a way to extend the expiration date.

Hilton made it easy to top off my account by transferring enough points to book the room I wanted. Getting 0.55 cents per point isn’t the best deal, but it’s better to use points than to let them sit in your account forever or, in my potential case, lose them.

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