Bonus on Transfers from Citi to Hilton: Here are Better Things to Do With Your Points

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Citi ThankYou transfer partners make the Prestige and ThankYou Premier cards super valuable card products. For the past year they’ve just kept adding to the value proposition.

Citi Prestige earns 3 points per dollar on air and hotel and double points on dining and entertainment. It also comes with American Airlines lounge access (when flying American) and a Priority Pass Select card (with unlimited visits and 2 free guests). And 3 free rounds of golf per year, too, and 4th night free on hotels.

Points from these two cards transfer to miles and points. And points from other Citi ThankYou points-earning cards can be transferred to one of those card accounts and on to miles and points.

Transfer Bonus to Hilton

Citi ThankYou Rewards is offering a bonus on transfers to Hilton HHonors through Januar8y 6.

Citibank introduced Hilton as its first transfer partner nearly 3 years ago. We’ve seen bonus offers for transfers to Hilton before.


View from the Hilton Colombo, Sri Lanka

Hilton points are generally worth half a cent apiece. Getting two points per ThankYou point means transferring points at a value of a penny. In many cases you’re much better off just using Citi points to straight up buy travel. But even that’s not the best use of points.

What You Should Really Do With Citi ThankYou Points

ThankYou points from a Citi Prestige or Citi ThankYou Premier account transfer to:

  • Air France-KLM
  • Asia Miles
  • Etihad Airways Guest
  • EVA Air Infinity MileageLands
  • Garuda Indonesia GarudaMiles
  • Hilton HHonorsTM
  • Malaysia Airlines Enrich
  • Qatar Airways Privilege Club
  • Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer
  • Thai Airways Royal Orchid Plus
  • Qantas Frequent Flyer
  • Virgin America Elevate
  • Virgin Atlantic Flying Club

It’s good to see transfer bonuses coming from Citi, but the Hilton bonus isn’t even the only one currently on offer, there’s also a bonus on Virgin America transfers through October 21.

My favorite transfer partners are:

  • Singapore Airlines which offers their own members much better premium cabin award space on Singapore flights than other Star Alliance frequent flyer program members get, and which has real value United Airlines domestic and Hawaii awards in addition to Star Alliance awards generally.

    Citi ThankYou transfer partners
    Singapore Airlines Boeing 777 First Class

    Citi ThankYou transfer partners
    Singapore Airlines Airbus A380 Suites Class

  • Etihad for their own first class awards.

    Citi ThankYou transfer partners

  • Cathay Pacific Asia Miles is a valuable oneworld partner with its distance-based award chart. Cathay has talked about making more award space available to members with their own points.

    Citi ThankYou transfer partners

Points in a Citi Prestige account can be used directly to purchase airfare on American Airlines at 1.6 cents apiece in value. That means triple points earning on air and hotels gets you 4.8 cents per dollar in value in American Airlines tickets. I just cannot get excited about Hilton transfers, though of course there’s no downside to Citi’s offering this bonus.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Editorial note: any opinions, analyses, reviews or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by any card issuer. Comments made in response to this post are not provided or commissioned nor have they been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by any bank. It is not the responsibility of advertisers Citibank, Chase, American Express, Barclays, Capital One or any other advertiser to ensure that questions are answered, either. Terms and limitations apply to all offers.

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  1. “Hilton points are generally worth half a cent apiece.”

    Thanks a lot Gary, you’ve poked the bees nest again and now all of us who don’t have an Amex Surpass card and don’t want to spend 60 nights a year at a Hilton or aspire to 4 nights at the Conrad Beijing are going to get lectured for being ignorant and traveling the wrong way.

  2. Gary,

    Your headline is “here are better things to do with your [TY] points”. But your post doesn’t really tell us what we “should” do. You list all of the transfer partners, some of which are poor value, and then say you “like” SQ, EY, and CX. You like the products, sure, we all do. But does that actually make them *good* transfer options? SQ may have a good product and better availability through their own program, but they also have fuel surcharges.

    I’m sitting on 100,000 TY points, and am trying to figure out what my “splurge” should be.

  3. @Dan they add fuel surcharges, but they vary with destination. YQ for SFO-HKG, for instance, is $13.80. SFO-ICN it’s $180. LAX-NRT (A380) it’s $90. I’m not sure that’s a stopper.

  4. I agree with the headline but not the conclusion. The best use of the TY point — if you have the Prestige card — for the average Joe is 1.6 cents/point towards purchasing AA tix.

    Although the TY point ticket purchasing site via Connexions travel does not always work correctly, it often returns the lowest price when pricing coach class tix.

    It may not be as sexy as the Singapore suites or other premium travel purchases, but it is often far easier to use and you don’t have to worry about fuel surcharges and the like.

    Moreover, you earn miles on that ticket you purchased with points.

    If you have a Premier card, it still may be worth it to purchase airfare with the diminished point value, as I don’t think any of the air or hotel transfer partners are anything to write home about.

    Yes, if you are Gary Leff, who is constantly jetting around the world you might find some value with the transfers, but the average Joe, purchasing tix with your points is the best choice IMHO with the card — and this card, unlike the AMEX Plat card, earns bonus points across a number of categories and venues.

  5. Not to worry. No more wasting time educating bloggers who simply can’t get the simple concept that a 0.5 cent HH point is worth 3 cents as starpoints 😉

    G’day!

  6. Thanks for another informative article. Which transfer partner would you use if you were flying to Chile? Or to Paris?

  7. “a Priority Pass Select card (with unlimited visits and 2 free guests)”…

    Note that all Priority Pass Select cards are NOT equal. Visits using a Prestige linked PP card are free for the cardholder and up to 2 guests. But the T/C for the Priority Pass Select card I just received in the mail, courtesy of my American Express Surpass card, states “$27 per person”, for both the cardholder and each guest. Automatically charged to the linked Surpass card.

    Worse, it’s up to you to know this, and they go out of their way to conceal it: “The cardholder must sign the ‘Record of Visit’ voucher, or sign the electronic reader (as applicable), which will also reflect the exact number of accompanying guests, if any, but does not show any per person per visit charge. The charge per visit for the cardholder, where relevant, and that for any guests will be based on the ‘Record of Visit’ voucher/ log submitted by the lounge operator.”

    It goes on to warn you to keep your copy of that ‘Record of Visit’, just in case the lounge operator claims you had more guests than you actually had.

    So if you receive several PP cards linked to various ccs, be careful which one you use. I cut up the one I got from AMEX, and tossed it out, to make sure I didn’t accidently use it instead of the one linked to my Prestige card.

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