When Do Hilton Honors Points Expire? When Do Hilton Honors Points Expire?

When Do Hilton Honors Points Expire?

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Your Hilton points will expire if you have no eligible activity on your Hilton Honors account for 24 months. Per the Hilton Honors Terms and condition page:

Members who do not have eligible activity as defined in a. – d. below in any 24 consecutive month period may be removed from the Program and are subject to forfeiture of all accumulated Points

Once Hilton Honors points are forfeited, they cannot be reinstated.

Hilton Honors Logo Black

How To Keep Your Hilton Honors Points Active

According to the Hilton Honors terms and conditions, you need to have at least one of four eligible activities in 24 months to keep your points active:

  1. Stay at a Hilton property.
  2. Earn Hilton Honors points through any third-party source- including co-brand credit card spending.
  3. Buy Hilton Honors points.
  4. Donate some of your points using the Hilton Honors Giving Back Program.

In addition, Hilton's FAQ page also lists “register for a Hilton Honors promotion” as an eligible activity to avoid expiration. However, since this type of activity isn't listed as a qualifying activity in the terms and conditions, you shouldn't rely on it counting.

Earn points through Hilton Honors credit cards

The easiest way to keep your account active is by earning Hilton points for everyday spending on any of the following co-branded Hilton Honors cards:

Other earning activities to keep your Hilton Honors account active

You can earn Hilton Honors points in any of the following ways.

You should remember that Hilton is relatively generous with what is considered eligible for extending your points validity. As such, Hilton adds a catch-all covering other offers in its T&Cs, stating that the following activities will count towards extending the validity of your points balance.

“Earn Hilton Honors Points through any third party source of Hilton Honors Point accumulation.”

So, it may be worthwhile to keep an eye out for the odd way to earn a few Hilton Honors Points since it will help keep your points active.

Does pooling of Hilton Honors points extend their expiration?

Pooling Hilton Honors points does not extend the expiration of either account's points. You'll need to find some other way to generate activity to save your Hilton points from expiring.

Does transferring Amex points to Hilton Honors extend their expiration?

Hilton is an Amex Membership Rewards transfer partner. However, transferring Membership Rewards to Hilton Honors will not count towards extending the validity of your Hilton Honors points. That's a real bummer as this would be the easiest way for most travelers to generate activity — even at the last minute.

While it won't extend your Hilton points expiration, here are Hilton's point transfer partners:

From
To
Transfer Ratio
Min.Transfer
Average Time
Hilton (Honors)
1,000:2,000
-
Immediate
Diners Club (Club Rewards)
United States
Hilton (Honors)
1,250:2,000
-
Unknown
Hawaiian Airlines (HawaiianMiles)
Hilton (Honors)
10,000:15,000
-
Unknown
Hilton (Honors)
Hilton (Honors)
-
18 hours
Virgin Atlantic (Flying Club)
Hilton (Honors)
10,000:15,000
-
Unknown

Track When Your Hilton Honors Points Expire Through AwardWallet

One of the best ways to keep track of your Hilton Honors points so the expiration deadline does not sneak up on you is by adding your Hilton Honors account to your AwardWallet account. That way, you will receive timely email reminders about any points that are about to expire. This gives you ample time to take action to prevent your points from being lost.

Our Take

With a 24-month expiration deadline and many ways to keep your Hilton Honors Points active, there isn't an excuse to let your points balance expire. In a worst-case scenario, you can simply log into your account and donate some points to keep your points alive. However, it shouldn't ever have to get to that situation.

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Comments

  • Made purchase using Hilton Honors American Express Card over month ago, paid off balance on it but my Award Wallet account shows the points expire in 1.2 month (last updated 3 days ago). Is it Award Wallet glitch?

    • AwardWallet calculates your expiration date based on the activity found in your Hilton Honors account. Have the credit card points hit your Hilton Honors account yet? If so, make sure your AwardWallet account is updated. You may need to prompt a manual update of your Hilton Honors account (by clicking the ‘reload’ button next to your Hilton Honors account).

  • On Hilton’s site it says “Points expire after 15 months of inactivity” at https://www.hilton.com/en/hilton-honors/guest/points/ . Awardwallet is showing unknown expiration for my account right now, which makes sense since I can’t figure it out when looking at my account. My points history only shows the past 12 months.

  • Hilton just told me that the points don’t expire

    • That’s incorrect. As is still posted on Hilton’s website: “Members must keep their Hilton Honors account active in order to keep their Hilton Honors Points. Under the new policy, if your account is inactive for 24 consecutive months, your total Point balance will expire.”

  • I just made a donation of 4,200 points to Giving Back, and both Hilton and AwardWallet show the points deduction, but AwardWallet is still saying they expire in 7 days???

    • That should count as qualifying activity. However, if the transaction detail isn’t showing in your Hilton Honors account yet, AwardWallet won’t see it as qualifying activity. I’d recommend checking back in a couple of days.

  • For some reason, I got a notification that my points would expire from Reward Wallet, even though I had redeemed recently. Are we sure that redemptions count?

    • Double-checking the terms, it only states “a. stay at a hotel within the Hilton Portfolio pursuant to the terms herein”. So, a redemption seemingly would count when you complete the stay – not when you redeem the points. We updated this post to reflect that. Thankfully you still have time to generate activity before the expiration pause ends at the end of 2022!

      • I’m set to loose points with Hilton. I stayed at Hilton but booked it through Alaska Air (I needed to do something with my points on that site). Doesn’t that count ?

        • Ah, that’s the rub. Outside-party bookings can be restricted from earning eligible stay credits. However, it’s worth reaching out to Hilton and inquiring if this stay could be credited to your account.

  • I won’t be staying at any Hilton properties again and won’t recommend Hilton to anyone. There are plenty other hotel options with loyalty programs that don’t trash your points without providing any notice. Not the way to treat your customers. So long Hilton.

  • well done Hilton

  • Wow, finally! This change was long overdue – 24 months is the bare minimum for a points expiration policy (are you listening AA?)…12 months was a joke….thanks Hilton for waking up and making this tardy, but VERY WELCOME change to your points expiration policy!

  • Still not back to travelling full-time, they should push it back even further or remove altogether

  • You can earn Hilton points on Guest Opinion Rewards surveys, and in the past, that would extend expiration. Does that still apply with the changes they made to the T&C’s?

    • It should! That should fall under the “third-party” catch-all in the terms and conditions. I’ve added it to the list of ways to generate activity.

  • Have the Hilton CC, expiration doesn’t mean much to me.

  • When I update my Hilton account on Award wallet, it still returns that points expired in 1.2 years, not 2 years. When will this be fixed?

    Where on the Hilton site can I find these terms and conditions? As the T&Cs I find don’t mention point expiration, so I must be looking in the wrong place

  • Always glad to see expiration policies improved. However, a no expiration policy, like many of the airlines at this point, would be great.

  • JANICE L COLEMAN says:

    Hilton appears to have been slow to extend the life of the HHonors points in people’s accounts; unlike the airlines and Marriott, etc. However, any extension would really be nice since many people have been unable or unwilling to travel over the past year or more because of COVID issues and countries’ borders closing, opening, and then closing again.

  • “Redeem your point for a stay at a Hilton Property.” – This is huge for me personaly as I like to redeem points for stays and keeps expiration period extended.

  • Why hasn’t the pause until 12/31/2022 been reflected in Awardwallet’s tool? When will it be?

  • Anthony Towns says:

    I’ve been a Hilton Honors member since 2009 and never used my points ,and just found out that they have and expiation date, I was wondering did Hilton send out e-mails
    regarding this . I would like to have my points back because all I stay in is Hilton Hotels for the points, to have on warning about points being take way for none use with out nonfiction is wrong. If no resolution to this problem will have to explore other options

  • Fenspinbi says:

    I like the fact that the Hilton cards effectively forestall expiration, since having an MR-earning card isn’t sufficient (transferring points doesn’t extend). I just got the Hilton Honors card, as they’re aggressively marketing that to members, and it was a no-brainer since…well…you can’t have too many travel cards. Great article!

  • Jens Kuehlers says:

    Since point expiry has been paused for 2021 too can we pause expiration notices in Awardwallet too?
    https://awardwallet.com/blog/hilton-honors-2021-program-changes/

  • I called Hilton becuse my points are set to expire in 2 months. Even though I currently have zero status and have not stayed in one of their hotels in over 2 years, I still have over 500k of points. They said not to worry, because of COVID the points will not expire before March of 2021, but nothing on my account says that when I login. I am hoping the person I spoke to was correct, and will likely call again to verify as the date gets closer.

  • pooling doesn’t extend but transfering used to… does anyone know if that still works?

  • The bad thing is that the Hilton points expire and the good news is that there are plenty of possibility to avoid the expiration of points: lot of partners.

    • I read that if I buy Hilton Honnors points I can extend the expiration date. It was not clear to me if all the points will have a new expiration date or only the recently purchased ones.

      • All valid transactions will extend the expiration date of all points to 15 months. Buying miles is a valid transaction for extending the expiration and therefore all points will be valid for another 15 months.
        But currently Hilton paused expiration until 31.12.2021 since mid march 2020.
        So there is no reason to extend the duration now.

  • I agree that a no-fee HIlton AmEx card is very useful for keeping an account active. I set my card up to pay for an inexpensive monthly (or even annual) charge, which then continually resets the expiry date for my HIlton miles. I use a similar strategy with other no-fee cards for other points and miles programs. I actually think this is a primary advantage of having some no-fee cards in one’s portfolio.

  • Be careful about trying to use online shopping activity to extend your expiration date when it it just 2-3 months away. If, for any reason, the shopping click does not track properly, or the points are reversed, you don’t want to be out of time!

  • Glad they moved this to 15 months, would have preferred 18 months though.

  • The Aspire is actually the card I use the most. I appreciate working with AMEX for their extended card benefits.

  • Guest opinion rewards for the win

  • Juan Ignacio says:

    Is an eligible activity if I make a e-reward transfer?

    • It should! I’m guessing that would fall under “earn Hilton Honors Points through any third party source of Hilton Honors Point accumulation”. We tried to include the examples we knew would count in this article. If an e-reward point transfer works, we would love to know about it!

  • May be we can redeem a hotel to stay and cancel it to prevent to expire? Just a suggest, the most good idea is shopping and earn some points to Hilton

    • I don’t think that will count. Hilton’s T&C for qualifying activity includes “stay at a hotel within the Hilton Portfolio pursuant to the terms herein”. So, I’m guessing that you actually would need to complete a points redemption stay to actually generate qualifying activity.

  • E-rewards have not been working for me since I have not been given any surveys to fill out in the last year. But I have found that guest opinion rewards also gives Hilton rewards and have extended my expiration. I am so thankful for that!

  • I like the Hilton program as it’s the one where you earn hotel and airline points on stays. But, the expiry has always been a program. 15 months is better, but I hope they move to never expiring.

  • Great that it has been increased – Useful for those who are not earning them on a regular basis.

  • 15 months seems odd… why not 18? But a slight improvement is still an improvement.

  • Purchase through Hilton shopping works

  • Hilton is doing better than other chains under pandemic situation.

  • What about points from Lyft rides (not that I’ve used Lyft for the last 5 months)? Does that work to extend Hilton points expiration date? Thanks.

    • That should work! Hilton’s T&C for qualifying activity includes “earn Hilton Honors Points through any third party source of Hilton Honors Point accumulation, including a Hilton co-branded credit card, pursuant to its terms.” And Lyft should count as a third-party source of point accumulation.

  • Not enough time still. Luckily I keep a HH credit card and make sure to do some minimal MS with it.

  • I agree that extending the expiration time from 12 to 15 months is barely helpful. I do have the credit card and recently got an offer for 1000 extra base points per thousand dollars spend. I’m not sure if that will entice me to use it a lot but it’s definitely a way to keep the points from expiring.

  • I appreciate the extension from 12 months to 15 months.

  • Due to the pandemic, I believe they have stop expiring points in the meantime. Also I did not know they extended it to 15 months from 12 months. I am also curious as to why redemption of amex points to Hilton does not reset the clock.

  • Not sure that 12 months to 15 is a meaningful difference, especially for those of us who aren’t always traveling.

  • wow, i had no idea that it expires!!

  • 15 months seems like too much. In this context, with so many airports closed, the points should not expire.

  • Thank goodness for my awardwallet to keep me posted when points expire! Sadly i had to let my Hilton points expire…

  • Just login to my account in Account Overview and below “Ways to use your Points” there is the statement: “Points expire after 15 months of inactivity” Is it something new?

  • Just tried shopping portal; United States not an option for shopping region from drop list. Went to E-Rewards, select Hilton and only option is a link to join Hilton Honors.

  • I tried Hilton last week at Amazon. The points deducted but no activity showed up. Could this method be dead?

  • Award Wallet now points to Hilton terms which states the only valid actions to keep points from expiring are donation, purchasing points, earning points and stays. Spend is not included. So are there any data points about this, is amazon or other spend still working?

  • Does using points for a hotel room count as activity to keep the account active and prevent the points from expiring?

    • Based on what Hilton says, yes. Based on what I see, it appears as though it’ll extend expiration only after the stay has occurred. So the stay appears to need to occur prior to the expiration.

  • Andy Bryant says:

    I bought 5,000 points in the promotion in July this year, and I can see the points increase in my balance, it isn’t showing in the all-points-activity report on hilton.com, so Awardwallet thinks my points will expire in 3 months.

    Any idea what’s going on, or how I might fix it?

  • Hello. Does transferring points from one family member to another family member keep it active? Thanks. Oh, and what is the Amazon trick?

    • Transferring to a family member does not extend expiration. Amazon trick: use 1 Hilton point as a part of your amazon.com purchase (as a form of payment) and it’ll extend the life. Pay the rest with your credit card on file.

  • Thanks! I just used the Amazon trick. 🙂

  • Samuel Rhoades says:

    Like the $1 Amazon card idea. Thanks

  • I bought points in June 2018 and yet have received an email telling me that a bunch of my points expire in October !

  • Thanks for the idea. I just bought a $1 amazon GC (5 HH points and $0.99 CC)

  • jamesdinct says:

    It does indeed worK, I called again and had this confirmed. Thanks!

  • emceebrooks says:

    Yes, I just did this. I purchased a $5 Gift Card at Amazon, sent it to my wife, used 100 Hilton points to cover $.20 of the Gift card. They charged my Credit Card $4.80 and my Hilton Hhonors account 100 points– extending it for another year. Great idea!

  • jamesdinct says:

    It looks like activity is activity, no matter the increment. I called in and was given the thumbs up. I think I will call back once more in a couple days just to verify as I have a pretty large quantity of points. However it appears that it’s not the size of the ship but the motion of the ocean in this case.

  • jamesdinct says:

    I just bought a $5 amazon e gift card. I used a $5 virtual reward card I got for doing an online survey for $4.99 worth of the purchase. I then used 5 HH points to pay for $0.01 worth of the purchase. I am going to see if this will qualify as activity to extend my points expiration date. Unless someone has already proven that it will not? Please update me if so, I will just go back and spend the aforementioned $1 to do so. I will update the thread when I find out.

  • Thanks Howie, seems like the best option, now that cece has confirmed a low cost purchase works.

  • Can anyone recommend the best option to extend HH points for non-US based members please? International shipping costs usually rule out a shopping portal and the Amazon option (which I could use for a Kindle purchase) seems like por value.

  • Does pooling your points with someone else count as an activity that extends the expiration?

  • David Spilkia says:

    It seems the shopping portal is no longer available to you if you live in the United States

  • I can now confirm it worked – used 1.00 worth of Hilton points (500) on my recent amazon purchase and it extended my expiration date for a year…only days short of losing them.

  • cece camara says:

    Howie, I just tried the 1.00 amazon purchase so hopefully will let you know. But I have an additional question. So if award wallet only uses stays to track when my points expire…and since Hilton does not post your expiration date in my online account…I assume the only way to find out for sure whether this worked or not is to call them after a day or two and find out when my points expire? (the 500 points have already been deducted)
    As an aside, I think it is ridiculous that they don’t post that info on my account page!!

    • cece, AwardWallet doesn’t only use stays to track when you points expire – we look at all eligible activity.

      • cece camara says:

        OK- so after my amazon purchase, Award Wallet now shows that my points don’t expire for 12 more months (award wallet also shows the 500 points deducted)…so apparently this expiration date change is due to the points activity.
        But, on Oct 19th you said you did not think that using a small amount of points on an amazon purchase would reset the clock…yet award wallet shows it did. Since there is no way for me to confirm this on my Hilton online profile I have emailed them to find out when they show my points expire to confirm this is correct…stay posted and I will be back with the confirmation.

  • HH can be linked to Amazon and HH points can be used for shopping on Amazon in any denomination I choose. If I use HH points to pay for $1 on my next Amazon purchase, will this reset my HH account for another 12 months?

  • very helpful, thanks

  • Michael Paul says:

    For what it’s worth, I just called Hilton and they told me that they use 15 months as the calculation for when your points expire. Not sure if this number varies between different cardholders/agreements, but that’s the number they’re holding us to.

  • Expiring points are in my view a double edge sword for airlines and hotels. My family have 4 KLM accounts from a business class flight in August 15. They recently wrote to me to say they would expire which was disappointing. however when I looked into travel plans for 2017 I noted we have several opportunities to actually fly KLM but all of them were just after the points expired. As a result I changed my plans to avoid KLM and they lost around £3000 in revenue and I lost 10,000 among a family of 4.
    It seems short sighted to have a very short period before expiration, BA allow 36 months which seems altogether more sensible.

  • what if you book an award & then cancel? Would that reset the expiry date?

  • Another way to keep them alive right now is to open thanksagain account – they have 2 quizzes for 100 points each – and transfer them till the end of 2017

  • I just received 500 points for listening to a Hilton timeshare pitch.

    I also transferred 1000 Citi TY points to top up my account for an award, so I am good for another 12 months. The TYP transfer represents a pretty lousy exchange rate to be honest, but they were courtesy points from Citi due to a problem I had with the website so I considered them to be free 🙂

  • Gotta do some small transfer or something every so often to keep them alive!

  • I try to keep my eye on the ball regarding expiration dates of my Hhonors points. Admittedly, sometimes it falls off of my radar, so I, for one, really appreciate an article like this one. Inspired by it, I am moving my Hilton cc to the front of my wallet this week and will make sure I give it some action.

  • What are some good uses for 315,000 Hilton points? Is there good bang for points outside the US?

  • Thank you for the heads up on this! I am always looking around on my Hilton page when my points expire. It’s awesome to have this on AwardWallet! I did not know that they did the shopping too. Not bad to just buy points though. Does anyone know where they post when your points expire on their own Honors page? Is it the usual 6-8wks for credit for the shopping and dining?

    • Karen, I don’t know of a place where Hilton posts this. AwardWallet calculates expiration based on activity within your account. Typically you can expect up to 8 weeks for points to post from online shopping and dining portals. Sometimes they post sooner but there is no guarantee.

  • Like others mentioned. You can also add survey programs to helping to keep the account active.

  • erewards is what keeps me topped up.

  • I didn’t know I could shop through my Hilton credit card. Trying it out now! thanks!

  • Kevin Davis says:

    I also find that making a purchase via Hilton Shopping is good as well.

  • I’m new to hotel rewards programs and their credit cards. Beside Starwood, is there any hotel program that you can transfer for frequent flier miles?

    • Steve, in fact most every program out there allows you to transfer to airlines — it’s just that SPG is the only one that does a ratio of 1:1 with most airlines.

    • Please bear in mind that transfers usually lose a lot of value in comparison to what you would get if you redeemed points in original progam.

  • What about if you are gold through Amex? Do you even have to spend?

  • I have had the no fee card for years. I am debating upgrading the card to a fee based one but the 1 free weekend night doesn’t seem like a great incentive. I have tried to have them award me bonus points for upgrading the same as I would get applying as a new customer but as of yet no-go. For now I am going to go for status match to Gold based on my Hyatt status.

  • the no fee card is okay, but if you spend 10k on the citi card with a fee. you get a free room at pretty much any hilton property including waldorf and conrad properties

  • As this Possibility is not written about -> do transfers from E-Rewards count as a “eligible activity”?

  • In my experience, Hilton is good as well in terms of reminding you before the points are due to expire.

  • I have the HH card and stay a few times a year. I find the redemption of points to be hit or miss. Depends on if it is high season or really desirable resort

  • I use my Amex Hilton to charge $1 every 3 months or so.

  • Does e-miles point transfer count?

  • Good looking out. My Hilton points are about to expire in 2 months. Need to figure out what to do with them!

  • Jamesdinct says:

    I have a ton of Hilton points. Staying at a Double Tree tomorrow and just checked in to see if there was a Hilton points multiplying promo happening right now. Since my stays are often booked through a trade show parter they don’t always qualify for points to keep my account active. Glad I saw this post, I need to make sure I keep these points from expiring!

  • I try to use the shopping portal at least once every twelve months and have made a mental note for years to shop around Labor Day for all of my accounts that face possible expiration deadlines. Works for me: Labor Day = Portal Shopping Day.

  • ADAM PARSONS says:

    Use shopping portal or transfer va points over to HH.

  • I just use e-miles. Click on a couple of links and you end up getting maybe 1000 points a year or so

  • Hmm I thought the expiry period was 24 months but I guess I was wrong.
    Thanks for the post!

  • I’m lucky enough to stay regularly enough with Hilton not to worry about the points expiring, but if for some reason I was to stay less the shopping portal would be a fantastic way of keeping the points alive.

    It is just a shame that most of the other chains don’t have a shopping portal as I’ve had points expire in some of them for lack of activity. For the other chains that offer an option airline miles instead of hotel points, I’ll usually choose the airline miles because at least I can pool them and I’ll always have enough activity not to worry about them expiring

  • I have the no fee Hilton Honors card by American Express which does the HHHHHHonors ): of keeping the points alive.

  • Jinyoung Park says:

    I have the Citi Hilton card that doesn’t have an annual fee and use the card once a year to keep the points alive.

  • DaWoodMan1 says:

    It’s super easy to keep your Hilton account active! Dining, shopping, staying… but even then the no effort necessary method of holding a no annual fee hilton credit card is definitely the easiest way!

  • I would think that an e-Rewards or e-Miles redemption for HHonors points would reset the clock as well, no?

  • Do you know if Hilton will restore expired points?

    • Hilton does not have an established policy to reinstate forfeited points, however, as a one-time exception, and under specific circumstances, they will review requests and sometimes issue reinstatement offers.