Hilton’s points-earning value proposition has long been known for double dipping, the ability to earn both points and miles for your stays.

They’ve made things much more complicated though since now you can earn points and extra points instead of miles.

Or if you earn miles you can pick between ‘fixed miles’ (a set number of points per night or per stay) or ‘variable miles’ (a number of miles based on your spending.

This gets super complicated because you’re best off switching your preferences from stay to stay — short cheap stays are best earning fixed miles, long and expensive stays variable miles (or points and points). And on award stays you can earn points and points or points and variable miles but you will not earn fixed miles. So setting your preference to fixed miles leaves points on the table.

Adding to the complication is that there are frequent bonuses for specific partners. On a short (e.g. one night) stay I’ll want to earn points and fixed miles, and my choice for a cheap one night stay would be Virgin Atlantic because the earning rate is 1000 miles.

Unless there’s a bonus.

Hilton is offering double Singapore miles on all stays — that means 1000 Singapore miles per stay.

And the offer includes triple miles at some properties in the Asia Pacific region and even quadruple miles at others.

So they’ll give you as many as 2000 miles per stay, including one night stays.

Stay at any of the quadruple miles-participating properties and Singapore becomes a pretty attractive double dipping partner.

I really like Singapore Arlines miles — the award chart isn’t the cheapest, and they do add fuel surcharges, but there are one-way awards and Singapore gives its own members fantastic access to premium cabin award space.

You can’t really book Singapore AIrlines long haul business and first class awards using partner airline miles like miles in United MileagePlus or Air Canada Aeroplan. But you can usually book such awards with Singapore miles.

Of course you need to have some medium-term plans to make a redemption if you’re going to collect Singapore miles — since those miles expire after three years (literally — additional account activity will not extend the expiration of miles). You can add to your balances by transferring American Express Membership Rewards (takes around 48 hours generally) or Starwood Preferred Guest points.

---

You can join the 30,000+ people who see these deals and analysis every day — sign up to receive posts by email (just one e-mail per day) or subscribe to the RSS feed. It’s free. Don’t miss out!