Last year, my husband applied for the Amex Hilton Honors Surpass card (which is now the Hilton Honors Ascend card, see referral link here and Leana’s post about the Amex Hilton cards). The offer at the time included a free weekend night after the first year as a card holder. His card anniversary is coming up next month, so of course I’m busy scheming about where to redeem that Hilton free weekend night!
The free night is good at almost all Hilton properties on a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night as long as a standard award room is available. We have to use it and complete our free stay within 12 months of issuance.
Some Hilton hotel rooms go for $1000+/night, so it’s possible to get a lot of value out of this free night. However, we’re not going to fly anywhere exotic just to use this free night. My head is spinning with some decent options that fit into our travel schedule over the next year.
Dream Redemption—Hotel Del Coronado
My dream redemption for the Hilton free weekend night is at Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. I’ve always loved the look of this hotel, and I’ve dreamed about staying here someday. We could pair the free weekend night with points for a second night to have a short weekend getaway.
Unfortunately, this will have to remain a dream, because this redemption is just not practical. We would need to fork over 95,000 Hilton Honors points for the second night, and rooms are small and don’t sleep five comfortably. If my husband and I could find childcare and get away by ourselves for a weekend, I would jump on this option.
Practical Redemption—Existing Florida Vacation
Since we have a trip to Florida planned for a cruise next January, it makes sense to use the free weekend night on that trip. Our cruise leaves on a Saturday, so we could use the free night on the Friday night before our cruise. Since we are tentatively planning to visit Universal in the days leading up to our cruise, we could save money by moving to a “free” hotel for our final night in Orlando or Cape Canaveral.
Homewood Suites by Hilton Cape Canaveral—Cocoa Beach looks like a good candidate. It’s only one mile from the cruise port, and rooms sleep up to six people. The cash rate is around $300 for the night we need, so it’s a decent redemption for the free night certificate.
Thanksgiving Add-on Redemption—San Antonio
We drive to South Texas a few times a year to visit family, and sometimes we add on a quick stop to San Antonio along the way. San Antonio is my favorite tourist city in Texas. If you can only visit one city in Texas, I recommend San Antonio.
We love the Riverwalk. On our last detour to San Antonio, we didn’t make it to the Riverwalk. Since we will be heading that way over Thanksgiving, we could easily visit San Antonio on Thanksgiving weekend.
We have a couple of options that fit our family of five, including Embassy Suites by Hilton San Antonio Riverwalk Downtown and Homewood Suites by Hilton San Antonio Riverwalk/Downtown.
Spring Break 2019 Redemption
We are saving most of our Hilton points for Spring Break 2019, even though we haven’t fully decided on our travel plans. But, we’ve narrowed it down to a few possibilities. We could combine our points with a free weekend night for a longer stay.
If we stay in Texas, the Corpus Christi/Port Aransas area is high on my list. This Embassy Suites in Corpus Christi gets good reviews and is in a great location. Rooms run about $250 per night over Spring Break, or 40,000 Hilton Honors points. If we wanted to get even closer to the beach, we could stay at this Hampton Inn on Port Aransas (which is currently closed due to Hurricane Harvey, but scheduled to reopen in August 2018).
I’m also considering taking my kids to New Orleans for Spring Break. New Orleans has several Hilton properties near the French Quarter that would be perfect on points and with the free weekend night.
Local Staycation Redemption in Dallas
Of course, we could use our free weekend night right here in the Dallas area. Last winter, we stayed at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas. If we used our free night in the summer, we could play in JadeWaters, the hotel’s water park.
I would also love to stay at Hilton Dallas/Rockwall Lakefront over the summer. We could take a sunset cruise on Lake Ray Hubbard and enjoy the pool complex as well as the shops and restaurants within walking distance. This would make for a great short getaway before the kids go back to school.
Decisions, decision! Which one would you pick? Do you have a Hilton free weekend night on the way? Where will you spend it?
Click here to view various credit cards and available sign-up bonuses
Author: Nancy
Nancy lives near Dallas, Texas, with her husband and three kids. Her favorite vacations include the beach, cruising and everything Disney.
The Del is a resort – so can use the $250 credit from Aspire card. If you make it here please look me up (I live in Sd), would love to meet you guys.
My hubby and I just left for our digital nomad life! We both have 2 of these coming our way soon and are hoping to use them in France or UK around next March (during shoulder season so hopefully standard rooms will still be available). If not, we’ll end up using them either in Bali or Bangkok. 😀 😀
–do you know if we need to pay for the annual fee before we get these? I was going to cancel them (esp. because I just got the Aspire card) but if they arrive 6-8 weeks after the annual anniversary, I’ll end up having to pay for the annual fee…– 🙂
You get your free night 6-8 weeks after you sign up for the card, so cancelling wouldn’t work. Plus, you should never cancel right after signing up to avoid paying an annual fee. That’s a great way to get banned from Amex cards for life, and it’s also unethical.
hmmm I think you misunderstood my question 🙂 I was wondering about one year after one’s signup date, not about cancelling right after getting the card. That wouldn’t make sense anyway since the free cert is for your one year anniversary.
Amy, you actually get the free weekend night certificate every year you have the card – even your first year. So you’ll get one this year, 6-8 weeks after you signed up.
@Holly I don’t believe it’s the case. Those who signed up via special offer on old Surpass will get free weekend night after renewing it (a one- time deal). I wish it was a yearly benefit, that would be nice. Then again, its just more annnual fees to add to my collection. 🙂 If you spend $15k each year, you do get the cert, though. But I’m not gonna!
@leana Ah, I thought we were talking about the new Hilton Aspire card! Apparently I forgot between the first comment and the last. =)
@Holly No worries! Aspire card is an interesting product, for sure. I keep going back and forth on it. I probably will pull the trigger at some point. But that crazy annual fee, though!
@Army How exciting that you just started your big trip! My understanding is that you do have to pay the second year’s annual fee in order to get the free night.
Thank you! 🙂 We just spent two weeks in Barcelona and we are over the moons! We ended up booking most of our intra European flights with UR points so that takes a load off of worrying about paying for flights. I know issuers are making it harder to get new bonuses, but on the bright side, my bills are still high enough to keep regular spend bonuses high lol