Hilton vs. Hyatt

For years, I’ve been a huge Hyatt fan. Their top tier elite status offers the best benefits of all major chains. Their points are super valuable towards Hyatt stays. They let you use points (at a very reasonable rate) to upgrade to club rooms or suites. And they’ve maintained award charts when everyone else has ditched them! And, finally, I loved their partnership with Small Luxury Hotels of the World (SLH). Hyatt points fueled nearly every night of my trip to New Zealand in 2022/2023 when my wife and I spent three nights at the Park Hyatt Auckland and seven nights in SLH hotels.

Now, things have changed. Hyatt has jettisoned their SLH partnership in favor of Mr & Mrs Smith. That might have been a good thing except that they also jettisoned award charts for these independent hotels. Now, with Mr & Mrs Smith you’re unlikely to get more than 1.4 cents per point value (which is poor for Hyatt points).  With respect to booking independent luxury hotels with points, Hyatt is now mostly dead to me (see: Hyatt’s Mr & Mrs Smith now live – details broke my heart). Meanwhile, Hilton has come out of nowhere and taken up the SLH partnership mantel. Even better, they’ve promised to treat SLH hotels just like their own hotels with respect to point caps for standard rooms, free night certificates, 5th night free awards, and elite benefits. See: Fantastic updates about Hilton’s integration of SLH.

Most of the reasons for me being a Hyatt fan haven’t changed, but the SLH news, and the negative news about Hyatt’s approach to Mr & Mrs Smith, have me thinking that its time for me to pay a lot more attention to Hilton. In this post, I’ve compared the two chains head to head on the factors that are most important to me…

Overview

The following chart summarizes a bunch of differences between Hilton and Hyatt. To understand the chart, first note that while Hyatt has a fixed award chart (for their own hotels, not for Mr & Mrs Smith properties), Hilton does not. But.. Hilton has something like an award chart: each property has a maximum point price for standard rooms. Premium rooms can cost any number of points, but standard rooms are capped. The most expensive Hilton property overall (Waldorf Astoria Maldives Ithaafushi) is currently capped at 150,000 points per night. Most of the extremely expensive Hilton hotels, though, are capped at 120,000 points or less. And if you believe that Hilton points can be earned at three times the rate of Hyatt points (which I explain later in this post), then you can see that Hilton’s 120,000 point cap is similar to Hyatt’s top category 40K per night price (40K x 3 = 120K). And since Hyatt also has peak pricing up to 45K points per night, you could argue that Hilton’s 120K capped hotels offer better value than Hyatt’s category 8 hotels.

Earning Rate

The following sections show that, on average, its possible to earn 3 Hilton points for the same effort/expense that it takes to earn 1 Hyatt point. If you’re not a credit card rewards nerd like me, the details below may be very hard to understand. My apologies….

Credit Card Spend

• Hyatt point earning through Hyatt card and transferable point card spend
  • World of Hyatt card: 1x base, 2x bonus categories, up to 4x brand
  • Hyatt transferable points (Chase Ultimate Rewards, Bilt):
    • Base spend: 1.5x (Freedom) or 2x Bilt  (on 1st of month)
    • Category bonus spend at stores where you can buy many different things: 3x drugstore (Freedom), 5x office supply (Ink Business Cash)
• Hyatt summary: 1.5x everywhere, 3x drugstore, 5x office supply
• Hilton point earning through Hilton cards and transferable point card spend
  • Hilton cards: 3x to 5x base, up to 6x grocery, up to 7x dine/travel, up to 14x brand
  • Hilton transferable points (Amex): 4x base (i.e. earn 2x MR and transfer 1:2), 8x various categories (Biz Gold, Gold), 10x airfare
• Hilton summary: 5x everywhere (Hilton biz), 8x grocery (Amex Gold card) and a broad range of purchases (Amex Business Gold card)
• Without transfer bonus summary comparison:
  • Base spend: Hilton = 5x; Hyatt = 1.5x; Ratio = 3.33 Hilton points per Hyatt point
  • Misc store spend: Hilton = 8x; Hyatt = 5x; Ratio = 1.6 Hilton points per Hyatt point
  • With 30% Amex transfer bonus to Hilton (8x becomes 10.4x)
    • Misc store spend: Hilton = 10.4x; Hyatt=5x; Ratio = 2.1 Hilton points per Hyatt point
• With misc store spend, the ratio is only about 2 to 1, but with Hilton the categories of spend are much, much broader than just office supply and so it’s arguably easier to spend more in those categories (such as at grocery stores).
• Fudgy summary: With Hilton cards, earn 2 to 4 times as many points as Hyatt
• Conclusion: On average, earn 3 Hilton points for every 1 Hyatt point

Credit Card Bonuses

• Welcome bonuses
  • Hilton: Many more cards with Membership Rewards
  • Hyatt: Possible to get Ink cards and bonuses multiple times
• Referral bonuses
  • Hilton: Can refer from any Membership Rewards card to almost any Amex card (lower bonuses but more opportunities). Sometimes get extra bonuses like +10x restaurants
  • Hyatt: 40K Ink
• Conclusion: It’s difficult to measure the relative earning rate from credit card welcome bonuses and referral bonuses. Both offer multiple good options, but Hilton offers many more options for those who cannot apply for business cards.

Hotel spend

• Hyatt: 5x
• Hyatt with credit card status (Discover status): 5.5x
• Hyatt w/ top tier elite status: 6.5x
• Hilton: 10x
• Hilton with sub $200 annual fee credit card status (Gold status): 18x
• Hilton w/ top tier elite status: 20x
• No status comparison: Hilton = 2x Hyatt
• Credit card status: Hilton = 3.3x Hyatt
• Top status comparison: Hilton = 3.1x Hyatt

Plus: Hilton often has great 2x or even 3x promos so, in practice, the Hilton earning rate for hotel spend is probably much more than 3x Hyatt.

Point Value

It’s clear that Hyatt and Hilton points are on different scales. It is approximately 3 times cheaper to acquire Hilton points than Hyatt points. So, to compare the value of their points, I think it is fair to multiply Hilton point redemption values by 3. In fact, in the award chart comparison, you can see that Hilton’s max standard room point prices do match up at that 1 to 3 ratio compared to Hyatt. That said, the value you get from the points compared to cash rates depends on where each hotel falls within the award charts. For example, if Hyatt puts a $100 per night hotel into their category 1, but Hilton puts a $100 per night hotel into their category 3 equivalent (up to 40K per night), you’ll get much better value with Hyatt even after accounting for the 1 to 3 point ratio.

Award Chart Comparison

I took a stab at putting Hilton’s max standard room point prices into a chart so that we can compare Hyatt and Hilton’s categories side by side:

Point Value Comparison

When I last collected data to calculate median redemption values, I got the following results:

• Hilton: 0.5 cents per point
• Hyatt: 2.1 cents per point

Meanwhile, AwardWallet found that its users achieved the following redemption values:

• Hilton: 0.58 cents per point
• Hyatt: 2.19 cents per point

Keeping in mind that we can earn 3 Hilton points for every Hyatt point, it makes more sense to compare these values after multiplying the Hilton numbers by three:

Frequent Miler’s observed redemption values:

• Hilton: 1.5 cents per 3 points
• Hyatt: 2.1 cents per point

AwardWallet:

• Hilton: 1.74 cents per 3 points
• Hyatt: 2.19 cents per point

Regardless of which numbers you like, above, you can see that Hyatt points are significantly more valuable than 3x Hilton points.

Summary

Via the analysis above, I determined the following:

• Hilton and Hyatt points are on different scales. Based on point earning rates, 3 Hilton points = 1 Hyatt point.
• At the top of their award charts, the value per Hyatt point is roughly equivalent to the value per 3 Hilton points.
• When not constraining to the top of the award charts, Hyatt points are significantly more valuable than 3x Hilton points.
• In addition to offering more valuable points, Hyatt has a number of advantages over Hilton:
  • Suite upgrade awards (upgrade to a suite at the time of booking)
  • Suite upgrades with points
  • Much better top-tier elite benefits
  • Better sharing options including the ability to share top tier status for a stay (Guest of Honor) and the ability to share upgrade certificates and more.
• Meanwhile, Hilton has these advantages over Hyatt:
  • 5th Night Free awards make long stays cheaper with points
  • Free night certificates are uncapped (that’s a huge difference)
  • Meaningful elite status is much easier to get
  • Top tier status is much easier to get
  • Hilton’s promised implementation of their SLH partnership is waaaaay better than Hyatt’s Mr & Mrs Smith partnership.

Conclusion

I had previously mostly ignored Hilton. Hyatt was my go-to chain. Marriott was my back-up. That’s going to change. I’m very excited about Hilton’s partnership with SLH. I particularly love that we’ll be able to use free night certificates at those properties. Separately, I’ve noticed that Hilton has added more and more upscale hotels to their portfolio (including Graduate Hotels, which they bought recently) and so I probably would have been eying Hilton anyway. And now that Hyatt has crushed me with their Mr & Mrs Smith roll out, I’m ready to dance with Hilton. In fact, my wife an I have each already applied for the 175K Hilton business card offer that’s available at the time of this writing. I hope to spend $15K on each card before the end of June in order to secure free night certificates before its too late with those cards. Along the way we’ll probably each also pick up an Aspire card in order to each get an annual free night, Diamond elite status, and more.

Despite my dalliance with Hilton, I’m NOT saying goodbye to Hyatt! Yes, I’m sad about the Mr & Mrs Smith situation, but I still love the incredible value that’s possible through Hyatt’s own hotels. I love Hyatt’s confirmable suite upgrades, guest of honor awards, and top-tier Globalist benefits. Hyatt does loyalty right. But it’s true, my loyalty is wavering just a bit…

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