Hilton HHonors Shop To Earn – Preview
Hilton HHonors has announced the launch of their online shopping portal called “Shop to Earn”1. It resemble other online shopping portals by credit cards and affinity programs in that they partner with online merchants and allow their members to earn extra HH points by shopping through the portal and using their card (rather than shopping directly with the merchant). This essentially allows the HH member to earn even more points from their online shopping moments (most likely to be in peak season during the Christmas Holiday season).
I recently did a study on credit card online shopping portals. So here are some statistics with regards to the number of merchant partners, they have 258 partners. This number is sure to increase over time. When we did our credit card shopping portal survey, one of the things we noticed was the great overlap of merchant partners among different portals. For example, you are likely to find Macys in Discover, Chase, Citi, BOA etc. And they may give you different points per value (or cash back percentage) depending on which card (or rather issuer) you use. In that survey, we found that Discover gave the most rebates consistently if their merchants were also found on other portals.
When I looked at Hilton’s merchants, I noticed fewer overlaps with other portals or frequent flyer programs. This tells me that they have quite a few unique merchants (which should please Hilton members). The key thing here is that even if there is a merchant overlap and Hilton pays less points, your main priority of shopping on this portal is to maximize your HH points. So this should not really be a concern.
As far as I’m concerned, this is great news for HH members because it is another means to earn more HH points. This launch comes on top of their recent launch of the Citi® Hilton HHonorsTM Reserve Card, where we estimate that their sign up bonus could be worth up to 100,000 points.
Below is s scrolling video of all their merchant partners2 for those of you who are curious.
References
1. Hilton HHonors Launches Global Shop-to-Earn Mall
2. Shop To Earn
