Is the Hilton Honors silver membership useful?

Hilton Silver, on the surface, seems close to useless. Yes, you earn 20% more points and a couple bottles of free water (which I'm sure most regular guests could get by just asking nicely at the front desk at most hotels), but the true value is the 5th night free benefit.

Every time you redeem 5 consecutive award nights at a given property, you get the 5th night free. If a free night costs, say, 20,000 points, you'll pay 80,000 points for 5 nights instead of 100,000.

Now think what happens if you buy Hilton points when they go on sale (https://milelion.com/2019/11/15/hilton-offering... ). These cost about 0.5 US cents each.
Let's say I want to buy them for the Conrad Maldives, which costs 95,000 points a night (or about US$1K if I were to pay cash). Buying points would mean I'm paying the equivalent of US$475 a night- still hefty, but nowhere as expensive as US$1K!

And then imagine I get the 5th night free. Instead of 95,000 5 points, I just need to buy 95,0004 points. My effective cost per night is US$380, and I save US$475- not too shabby!

So that's the true value of Hilton Silver to me. Don't expect much in the way of benefits when you stay at a hotel. But when you buy points...that's the true sweet spot.

Hi anon,

HHonors Silver is pretty bare bones, kind of like Krisflyer Elite Silver in my view. Nice to have, but it's not going to do much. 20% accelerated earnings on the points is nice, until you realise gold has +80%. And late check out is pretty much given to anyone with a basic membership. What you really want is gold, but that may be hard to get to depending on your travel patterns.

However, it is still good to have, especially if you end up in countries where water is expensive (have you tried buying water in Norway or Australia?). The 5th night free on award redemption will save you a bunch of points if you buy Hhonors points.

What I would recommend you to do is to also get a Visa Signature card, then register for the Visa Signature/Infinite Hilton Gold fast track challenge with your current Hilton Silver Status, do 2 stays or 4 nights (Xmas staycation anyone?) before end of 2019 and bingo, you got yourself a HHonours Gold for 2020. And that will be far more useful than the Silver.