You put a lot of effort into earning Hilton Honors points.
Maybe you have a stash of points you're saving for a big trip, or some points leftover from a big redemption that you've forgotten about.
It's important to keep in mind that Hilton Honors points do expire, but keeping them from expiring is pretty easy, fortunately. It can be as simple as earning Hilton points from a credit card.
Hilton Honors points expire after 12 months of inactivity. If your Hilton Honors account is inactive for 12 consecutive months, all of your accumulated Hilton points will expire and you can no longer use them to book a free stay.
Hilton defines inactivity as 12 consecutive months without any of the following activities:
If your account is inactive for 12 consecutive months, you have 90 days to take any of these steps or your points will expire.
If your Hilton Honors account is inactive for 5 years, it will be completely deactivated.
While Hilton has a short expiration period for points, the good news is it's easy to keep Hilton points from expiring. You don't even need to stay at a Hilton hotel to keep your points.
The cheapest and easiest way to keep Hilton points from expiring? Simply use 5 Hilton Honors points to offset $0.01 of an Amazon purchase by choosing to pay with points at checkout.
Here are the many ways you can keep your Hilton Honors account active.
When you book a Hilton stay directly through Hilton, it will keep your Hilton points active. It's important to note that booking a Hilton stay using points won't keep your points from expiring unless your stay is complete before the points expire.
You can keep Hilton points from expiring by staying at any brands in the Hilton Honors program.
Using any of the American Express Hilton Honors credit cards will keep your Hilton Honors account active and prevent your points from expiring because you will earn Hilton points on any purchase.
Use any of the following cards to earn Hilton Honors points to keep your account active:
Your Hilton points will stay active and the expiration date will reset when you earn Hilton points through any source.
In addition to using a Hilton Honors credit card or actually staying at Hilton properties, you can try these other ways to earn Hilton points.
If shopping, dining, and travel options won't work, you can also keep Hilton points from expiring with the following:
Have your Hilton Honors points expired?
In 2017, Hilton Honors introduced a formal procedure to restore expired Hilton points.
To qualify to restore your points, you must meet the following guidelines:
To reinstate your Hilton Honors points, you can log into your Hilton account and click the "Restore Points" link or go to this point reinstatement link.
Reinstatement of expired points isn't free. You will need to pay a reinstatement fee to "buy back" your points at $0.0025 per point (or $2.50 per 1,000 points) for between 1,000 and 100,000 points. To reinstate between 100,001 and 1 million points, you pay a flat rate of $250.
So, is it actually worthwhile to reinstate your points?
It depends. If your points expired, you probably haven't been very active in Hilton Honors and your points may simply expire again or go unused.
On the other hand, Hilton Honors points are worth around 0.5 cents each (double the cost to reinstate them) and you won't have trouble getting an even better value.
You can see some of the ways you can redeem Hilton points for maximum value here to potentially get 1.5 cents or more per point.
If you're going to use your expired points, it's probably worth reinstating them.
Hilton Honors points expire after 12 consecutive months of account inactivity.
Unfortunately, your Hilton Honors account doesn't tell you when your points expire. There is no warning that points are pending expiration, so you will need to get a rough idea by checking the date of your last activity if you don't use your Hilton account often.
Yes, you can reinstate expired Hilton points at a fee of $0.0025 per point on 1,000 to 100,000 points or a flat $250 fee for 100,001 to 1 million points.