Often the best time to acquire a new credit card is when you have a large amount of purchasing to do in that card’s specialty categories. If that spending happens to line up with an offer for an elevated sign-up bonus, that’s even better.
So when American Express announced an offer of 130,000 points plus a free night certificate with the mid-tier Hilton Honors Surpass card the timing was perfect for me to jump on it and sign up.
Hilton Honors Surpass Highlights
While the Hilton Honors Surpass doesn’t feature a free night annually, it does offer four quarterly $50 Hilton credits which more than negate the $150 annual fee if you’re staying at least once per quarter. For me, I’m able to do this without any additional effort.
The card comes with automatic and permanent Gold status in Hilton’s loyalty program. Gold members earn an 80% bonus on base points for each stay, and are eligible for upgrades. While early/late check-ins and departures are not a published benefit, in my experience it’s made little difference. Most hotels will try to accomodate loyalty members if you just ask nicely. In addition to other benefits Gold members get a $15 daily food and beverage credit at properties where free breakfast isn’t provided.
The Hilton Honors Surpass earns 12x at Hilton properties, 6x on dining, gas and groceries, 4x on online shopping, and 3x everywhere.
If you value Hilton Honors points at half a cent each, which is their cheapest cost on sale and often the value at which redemptions are calculated, then the Hilton Honors Surpass earns between 1.5% and 6% in its categories.
While not the biggest bang-for-your-buck card on the market, that’s pretty solid and if your goal is Hilton Hotel stays this card is good enough to use for general spending.
Earning a signup bonus on the card requires $3000 in spend (over 6 months). That means that if you want to keep on spending with the card a free night certificate is only $12k away, as it is awarded at $15,000 in a year. That could easily be worth doing if you haven’t got other pressing goals for credit card spending.
Surpass the Surpass Offer With Promotions
With card in hand, the timing was perfect to embark on a Hilton status challenge. After matching the Platinum status obtained with my IHG Premier Card, I stayed 14 nights in quick succession. These stays also aligned with a double points promotion Hilton offered which ended September 2, 2024.
After these stays I had secured Diamond status through the end of the next year and accumulated a total of 69,077 points between base points, status bonus points, promotional points and Hilton Honors Surpass spending points. After the first $50 quarterly credit total cost for these nights $1781.11. The average room night was $137.01. That’s not bad considering they were all booked last minute and most were suites.
So to do that starting from zero you’d end up with a Free Night Certificate and around 205,000 points after finishing the remaining spend required for the sign up bonus. In my case the rest of that $1219 was all spent during those two weeks on dining, gas and miscellaneous expenses.
Hilton Honors Surpass Bottom Line
The primary reason I wanted a Hilton card was for the ability to charge hotel stays and maximize points on brand spending. With Diamond status secured I’m thrilled to be getting 12x on each stay plus a 100% bonus on the base points.
I also feel like the Hilton Honors Surpass is kind of a Goldilocks in the middle of a three card lineup. It leaves room to upgrade or downgrade, or to apply for an Aspire or Honors card separately in the future. The quarterly credits are easy enough to use to make this card a keeper for the foreseeable future.
