Award Success: Standard Room Last Minute Hilton Honors Booking At The Narita Hilton

In our series Award Success, I’d like to feature the Hilton Narita today, where I was able to make a rather lucrative Hilton Honors award booking yesterday prior to my ad hoc departure from Japan due to the bad weather.

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People often complain that Hilton Honors points offer little value, but as a casual Hilton user with few stays throughout the year, I slightly disagree. The chain offers a few low-priced redemptions at set rates (for standard rooms), which can be extremely lucrative if rates soar for a particular location.

One of these is the Hilton Narita, a hotel where I stay maybe 3-4 times per year for the last 18 or so years (and the hotel still looks like it did on the first day I ever visited there FWIW, talk about nostalgia).

There were times when the Hilton NRT was extremely cheap, like $50-60/night, but these times are largely over, even though there are still other properties around Narita Airport with very low rates.

Nowadays, the going rate is more like US$130/night for the Hilton, and in some cases, such as this week it’s much higher. I was surprised when I looked for a last-minute booking yesterday.

I was originally planning to spend like 10 days in Japan for cherry blossom, but after only one day in Tokyo with extremely nice weather (Sunday), it turned to garbage mode again, and it’s simply not worthwhile hanging around in such a mess, especially at the current Tokyo hotel prices. I cancelled my reservations for the next 5 nights and decided to fly to Korea instead.

A night in Narita was required to take Asiana the following morning and the rate for this Hilton almost gave me a heart attack:

Thankfully, there was an option for points as well:

56,000 JPY is US$375, and that’s a pretty hefty price for any hotel, but for the Hilton NRT, it’s something out of this world. It’s not a luxurious hotel by any stretch of the imagination and this price… wow!

However, being able to use a lowly 25k redemption for this made it worthwhile for me to keep Hilton Honors on the back burner. I usually have a low amount of HH points, but of course, I could always transfer some Amex points in real time.

Most of my HH redemptions are in fact at the Narita Hilton, as rates often get out of control there, and I frequently need last-minute bookings. So when there is an Amex transfer prom,o I make sure to always transfer over a few points to have enough for 1-2 nights here.

Conclusion

This was an excellent ratio for Hilton points. 25,000 HH for US$375 is solid, hard to beat that. Sure I could have stayed at a cheaper non-international brand but I actually like staying at this Hilton. I always get a solid sleep here and the breakfast is very good. They also have a shuttle to the Aeon Mall and Narita City (which I didn’t use this time).

A similar value proposition applies to most other chains as well. For example, I used 6,500 Hyatt points at the Caption Osaka last week when the going rate for that select service brand was 40,100++ JPY. I’d never pay that, not even close. But being able to clock in such a low redemption for four nights is great value.

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