Question
I expect to lose my diamond status soon, though because of spending levels on my HH amex, will keep hilton Gold status.
I don't do so much business travel these days, most airplane/hotel trips are for leisure.
So I'm starting to wonder, without the "get in anywhere/anytime" Diamond privledges, would I be better off using some sort of cash back cards rather than these hilton cards?
At the Diamond level, I know I get good value from Hilton. I just spent about 250,000 hilton points to get 8 nights at the Hilton in Honolulu, and they upgraded us to a 1 bedroom suite, for which the fair market value (actual search for real pricing, not rack rate) was over $400 a night, +taxes.
so even ignoring taxes, that say got me a "value" of $0.0128 per hilton point. With the visa I earn 2 pts/dollar spent and with the amex, I earn either 3 or 5 points per dollar spent.
on card spending alone, it would take $125,000 of spending on the visa to get to 250,000 hilton points, and with amex it would be $83,000 or $50,000 depending on whether the transactions were the 3/dollar or the 5/dollar variety.
I'm not sure who has good cashback cards. I know that for years Discover has had 1% cashback bonus and assume that others are at least that good.
1% of the 125,000 would be only $1,250 or $156/night in the above situation, not a very good deal even for the worst quality rooms at the place (currently $199+taxes per night)
1% of the 83k and 50k would be even worse.
WHAT IS the best deal out there on a cash back card? Even without the Diamond status and upgrades, I think I might be doing best by taking the hilton cards (no annual fee, either!)