The Hilton Honors Ascend American Express Priority Pass Membership "Year"

Unlimited access to the Priority Pass network of airport lounges, which was long an afterthought compared to airline lounges and, more recently, the superb American Express Centurion lounges, has quietly become an impressive benefit of many super-premium credit cards, like American Express Platinum cards, the Chase Sapphire Reserve, and the Citi Prestige. In part that’s because Priority Pass has aggressively added airport restaurant locations where you can typically receive about $28 towards your food and drink bill (excluding gratuities). When I first started tracking that option, I recorded just 23 participating restaurants. The number is now up to 49!

Credit cards issued in the United States have typically offered either unlimited Priority Pass memberships or, like the Chase Ink Plus, “memberships” in name only where “members” pay $32 or so for lounge access. Obviously those memberships don’t offer any value at all at non-lounge locations, since the benefit is usually capped at $28-$30, although they might theoretically still be useful on long international layovers.

The Hilton Honors Ascend American Express struck an interesting compromise, offering a Priority Pass membership that includes 10 free visits per year, a benefit I enjoyed last year (although my partner’s new Hilton Honors Aspire card will give us both unlimited free visits while traveling together).

If you have an Ascend card and don’t otherwise have unlimited Priority Pass access, you should already be asking an important question: what’s a “year?”

Three ways a year could be defined

The two most common ways credit card benefits are restricted are by cardmember year and by calendar year. For example, American Express airline fee reimbursements are offered on a calendar year basis, while American Express Delta companion tickets are offered on a cardmember year basis, with the companion ticket appearing in your SkyMiles account shortly after your annual fee is charged each cardmember year.

There’s a third option, however, when benefits are provided by a third party: third-party program year benefits. For example, American Express Platinum cards offer Hilton Honors Gold status as an incidental benefit, but your Hilton Honors Gold status doesn’t depend on either the calendar year or your cardmember anniversary. Instead, it depends on the Hilton Honors program year, and your Gold status will continue for a year or longer even if you don’t renew your Platinum card.

American Express claims Priority Pass membership is based on a third-party program year

You can find American Express’s description of the Ascend Priority Pass benefit on the online application or by logging into your account. It’s more or less identical in both cases, and crystal clear (this text comes from the description in my online account, emphasis mine throughout):

Your Priority Pass Membership year begins on the date you enroll. Once enrolled, you will receive your Priority Pass Select card directly from Priority Pass within 10-14 business days. There is no membership fee with your Hilton Honors American Express Ascend Card. With your Hilton Honors American Express Ascend Card you will receive 10 complimentary lounge visits each Priority Pass Membership year. Once your 10 complimentary lounge visits are used, all subsequent lounge visits during the remainder of the Priority Pass Membership year are subject to a fee equal to the amount of the guest visit fee of the Priority Pass Standard program per person per visit, which will be automatically charged to your Card. To check on your remaining complimentary visit balance, please contact Priority Pass directly. Any unused complimentary lounge visits will be forfeited at the end of each Priority Pass Membership year.”

In other words, whenever you get around to enrolling in Priority Pass, the clock starts on your Priority Pass membership year, during which you can make 10 total visits, including guests. This would theoretically be gameable, for example by waiting until a few weeks before the first trip you expect to use Priority Pass on, thereby delaying the start of your Priority Pass membership year.

But it’s not true.

The Hilton Honors Ascend Priority Pass membership is a calendar year benefit

I know travel hackers all fancy themselves jailhouse lawyers, so before anyone starts commenting about how crystal clear the terms and conditions are, let me say: I know how crystal clear the terms and conditions are. But if you rely on the terms and conditions, you’re going to end up with a bunch of $32 credit card charges before you know it.

Fortunately, I only ended up with one, but it illustrates the issue perfectly:

  • My Hilton Honors Ascend annual fee was charged on January 19, 2018;

  • I registered for Priority Pass on February 7, 2018;

  • I made 11 visits between August 20, 2018, and December 26, 2018, and was charged $32 for the 11th visit;

  • I made another visit on January 2, 2019, and was not charged.

There’s simply no other way to explain this set of facts than the benefit being based on the calendar year, contrary to the explicit terms and conditions of the benefit.

My secondary piece of evidence is that I called Priority Pass today to ask how the benefit works, and spoke to a lovely woman with a perfect British accent who nevertheless understood no English. After both of us shouted at each other in perfect English long enough, she finally understood my question and told me I get 10 free visits per calendar year, I’ve used 1, and I have 9 remaining. At that point I politely thanked her and she politely hung up on me, to both of our relief.

Conclusion

For me, travel hacking is about staying focused on a simple question: how does it really work? The systems we take advantage of lie on the intersection of marketing, engineering, and law. Sometimes the marketers talk to the engineers, sometimes the engineers talk to the lawyers, and sometimes nobody talks to anybody at all. It isn’t enough to ask what the marketers intended, or what the lawyers wrote, if you don’t pay attention to what the engineers actually programmed.

Gaming out my Waldorf Astoria stay

As I wrote last month, this January I’m heading to Maui for what I’m expecting to be an unusually-for-me expensive vacation, so I’ve spent some time in the past few weeks gaming out what the options are to save money on the trip without annoying my partner too much along the way.

Shorter car rental

Since we plan to drive around and explore Maui, I had initially planned to rent a car at the airport and drive to the Grand Wailea. I quickly realized this made no sense: not only would I pay for 5 days of car rental, but I’d also pay for five days of valet parking, since the Grand Wailea doesn’t have a self-park option.

By taking a cab or shuttle from and to the airport, I’ll save on both daily rental costs and daily valet parking: a roundtrip shuttle for two from the Grand Wailea’s preferred vendor costs just $99, and I may be able to shop around to bring that down even lower.

Amex Offer of $70 off $350

I was targeted for the current Amex Offer of $70 off $350 spent at “Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts in the US, Amsterdam, Berlin, Edinburgh, and Paris; and, Conrad Hotels & Resorts in the US.” While such promotions sometimes exclude Hawaii, this one doesn’t seem to, so I’ll use my Hilton Ascend American Express card to check in and put the first $350 of room charges on that card.

As I wrote in my original post, the Grand Wailea currently claims to give a $15 per person daily in-room dining credit as their Diamond breakfast benefit. Readers quickly pointed out in the comments that with a $7 delivery charge and 20% fixed gratuity, that works out to about $19 in actual food if you’re trying to spend the exact amount of the credit.

Instead of trying to game the room service menu to spend exactly $19 per day, I figure we’ll just order what we want and let the excess count towards the $350 threshold for my Amex Offer.

Hilton Honors American Express Aspire Card Referral

Thanks to American Express’s “universal referral” system, I can refer my partner to an Aspire card despite not having one myself (you can find my universal referral links on the Support the Site! page). I’ve written about it before, but it’s worth spelling out again just how good this deal is:

  • I receive 20,000 Hilton Honors points for referring my partner;

  • My partner receives 150,000 Hilton Honors points after spending $4,000 within 3 months;

  • My partner gets a $250 airline fee credit in 2018 and another $250 airline fee credit in 2019;

  • We already have an eligible stay planned where we’ll be able to use the $250 Hilton Resort statement credit (a cardmember year, not calendar year, benefit);

  • And she’ll get an unlimited Priority Pass membership that allows up to 2 guests, so if I ask nicely she might take me with her into lounges when we travel.

182,000 Hilton Honors points (after earning 3 points per dollar on $4,000 in spend) are over half the points cost of our stay at the Grand Wailea, which I jokingly valued at $8,500 but realistically value at around $2,000. Valuing the airline and resort statement credits at half of face value, this works out to roughly $1,375.

I don’t like paying $450 annual fees. I’ve never paid a $450 annual fee. But this is a no-brainer for us since we already have a stay at an eligible resort booked.

Conclusion

There is one interesting question you might have after reading this: my Ascend card will get a 20% discount on exactly $350 in spend, while my partner’s Aspire card will get a 100% discount on up to $250 in spend, so which card should the first Grand Wailea room charges go on, and which card should be the backup?

In part, the answer is that we don’t have to decide until we know the final room charge. If it’s less than $350, we’ll put the entire charge on the Aspire card and get $250 back. If it’s more than $600, we’ll put $350 on the Ascend and the remainder on the Aspire, maximizing both opportunities (and the higher Hilton earning rate on the Aspire).

But for final charges between $350 and $600, what’s the right order to place the charges in? I think my preference is to put $350 on the Ascend and receive $70 back, then put the remainder on the Aspire, because the remaining cardmember year Aspire credit will remain available for later use.

But there’s a good argument, an argument I might even agree with depending on the day, that the Aspire resort credit is available at such a limited footprint of properties that maximizing that credit when we do have the opportunity is a much higher priority than triggering a piddling 20% discount, the kind of discount I can beat 365 days a year through manufactured spend.

Sound off in the comments if you feel strongly about it one way or the other.

Free Hilton Honors transfers and my 2.2 cent per point redemption

As we near the winter holiday season, I’ve started planning a New Year jaunt to celebrate my recent nuptials. We already planned to visit the West Coast after Christmas, and since there was an expiring Alaska Airlines Companion Ticket in the mix, I decided to see if I could use the West Coast as a stopover to one of Alaska’s more far-flung destinations. Alaska offers nonstop flights from Portland to several Hawaiian islands, so I checked award availability at one of Hilton’s top-tier, 95,000-point properties: the “Grand Wailea, A Waldorf Astoria Resort.”

Transferring Hilton Honors points is now free and fast (but not instant)

I was surprised to see that for 5 nights right after the New Year, the Grand Wailea had wide open award availability for their standard “Terrace View” room. There was no way I was going to book anything less than a 5-night stay at a 95,000-point property, thanks to Hilton’s fifth-night-free policy on award stays for elite members. But a 5-night stay would still cost 380,000 Hilton Honors points, more than I happened to have in my account. Even after cancelling a couple Hilton reservations and rebooking those stays at Hyatt properties, I was about 100,000 points short.

That’s when I remembered that as part of the April 2, 2018, revamp of the Hilton Honors program, “points pooling” and “points transfers” are now free between all members. Let me start by saying it’s not immediately clear to me exactly why Hilton distinguishes “pooling” from “transfer” transactions: in both cases only the recipient of the transfer, or the creator of the pool, is able to redeem the points, and in both cases the contributor of the points is able to select the number of points they want the recipient to be able to redeem.

The limits on transfers and pooling are somewhat complex, so let me start by sharing the terms and conditions as they’re presented on the Hilton website:

“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 five hundred thousand (500,000) Points and receiving two million (2,000,000) Points via Points Pooling or Transfers combined per calendar year. Each Hilton Honors Member is limited to making six (6) transfers to other member accounts and six (6) Hilton Points Pooling transactions per calendar year. Invitations to join a Points Pool is not considered transactional. Transactions refer to the transfer of Points to another member account either through 1-to-1 account transfers or through Points Pooling.”

There are three moving pieces here:

  • The total number of points you can send in either transfer or pooling transactions per calendar year (500,000);

  • The total number of points you can receive in either transfer or pooling transactions per calendar year (2,000,000);

  • The total number of outbound transfer and outbound pooling transactions you can make per calendar year (6 transfer and 6 pooling transactions).

That’s my plain English reading of the terms and conditions, but if anyone has run up against these limits in practice or found a way around them, let me and your fellow readers know in the comments.

All that being said, yesterday I asked a travel hacking buddy to transfer over the points I needed to book my 5-night stay at the Grand Wailea. Then I waited. And waited. And waited.

Ok, I only waited about 11 hours, but the point is, don’t expect points transfers to take place immediately, and don’t count on them if you need points for an immediate redemption.

I received a confirmation e-mail (as did the person sending the points) a few minutes after noon the day after the request, so it’s possible they run a batch process every day at noon to execute the previous day’s transfers.

I redeemed 380,000 points for a $8,466 stay

The stay I redeemed 380,000 points for would otherwise cost:

  • $7,199 room rate;

  • $200 resort fee;

  • and $1,067 taxes.

That gives an almost comical 2.2 cent per Hilton Honors point redemption, or 13.2% in value on my grocery store manufactured spend, where I earn 6 Hilton Honors points per dollar on my American Express Ascend card.

You may remember that as part of the April revamp of the program, Hilton no longer excludes Waldorf Astoria resorts from the Gold and Diamond elite breakfast benefit. After reaching out to the property for an explanation of their benefit, the “Room Reservations Agent” explained that:

“You would receive a daily $15.00 per day up to 2 person a in room dining credit. Unfortunately the $15.00 in Only for in Room dining" [sic].

Being a pedant, I looked up the Grand Wailea’s in-room dining menu, and there actually are several items at or below the $15 price point. I hope you like avocado toast as much as I do!

Did I overpay?

To be clear, I booked this particular top-tier property mainly for the blog content, since I couldn’t find any useful information online about how Diamond benefits there work in practice.

But, being me, I also did a quick rundown of alternate properties, in case you want to go to Maui for some reason besides getting a couple good blog posts out of it. Here are the properties that still have award availability as of today:

  • Wailea Beach Resort - Marriott, Maui. 200,000 Marriott Rewards points for a 5-night stay.

  • Days Inn by Wyndham Maui Oceanfront. 75,000 Wyndham Rewards points for a 5-night stay.

Of course, money can also be exchanged for goods and services, and some light browsing turned up what seems like a pretty good deal through Agoda.com, for a total of $2936.03 for five nights at the Hyatt Regency Maui Resort and Spa, a rate that even includes breakfast.

Using 200,000 Marriott Rewards points (worth $2,000 in cash if transferred from Ultimate Rewards) and $2,936 as my most likely alternatives, I redeemed 380,000 Hilton Honors points at between 0.5 and 0.77 cents each, a solid but unremarkable redemption.

Obviously that’s not going to stop me from bragging to friends and family about my $8,500 honeymoon.

Conclusion

I’m very curious how this trip will work out, since after reading a slew of reviews online it seems like the Grand Wailea changes their policies every few weeks. My conservative hope is an upgrade from our standard “terrace view” room to at least an ocean view room, since that was one of the delights of our stay at the Hyatt Zilara Rose Hall. The property also has what looks like an all-suites tower, which Hilton Diamonds seem to very occasionally be upgraded to for free (paid upgrades are also available).

We plan to rent a car in order to see some other parts of the island, which means at a bare minimum paying $30 per day for valet parking, since the hotel doesn’t have a self-park option. Given the certainty of those expenses, plus any food and drinks we charge to our room, I’m thinking hard about whether to sign up for an Aspire card before we make the trip. I have the option of upgrading my Ascend card, which would sacrifice my bonused grocery store earning rate, so that’s of marginal interest. But my partner has never had a Hilton credit card and she’d be eligible for the current 150,000-point signup bonus, plus a $250 resort credit during our stay.