When it comes to redeeming hotel points in the Maldives, the Conrad Maldives Rangali Island has been in and around the top five options for some time. It’s certainly the best Hilton option in the Maldives. Then in 2017, Hilton announced their intention to build the Waldorf Astoria Maldives.
A few weeks ago, the Waldorf Astoria Maldives began accepting paid reservations from 1st July 2019, but there was no sign of any reward availability. Earlier this morning, One Mile at a Time posted that the Waldorf Astoria Maldives has now opened availability for Hilton Honors points redemptions.
Paid rates are rather expensive, to say the least. Here are the rates for a base-level room in early November 2019:
As you can see, standard room rewards are listed at 120,000 points per night. This is a significant development. Previously, even the most expensive Hilton redemptions were unofficially capped at 95,000 Hilton Honors points per night.
That said, I can somewhat understand the thinking here, given the base-level room at this property is a 234sq.m beach villa complete with private pool.
Ideally, you would book a 5-night stay to take advantage of Hilton’s ‘fifth night free’ on reward stays. That would require 480,000 Hilton Honors points – making the cost per night ‘just’ 96,000 points per night.
Get yourself a huge discount at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives
Hilton is currently offering a 100% bonus on all purchases of 10,000 Hilton Honors points or more. This opens up an interesting opportunity for a discounted stay at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives.
Head to the buy points page on the Hilton website, (you’ll to need to log in or create a free account here) where you’ll see the option to purchase 80,000 Hilton Honors points for $800 – this comes with 80,000 bonus points.
Now that’s the maximum amount you can buy per account, per year. However, Hilton allows free points sharing between members. Your partner/family member/colleague could purchase another 80,000 points (+80,000 bonus points) and simply transfer them across to you. That would give you 320,000 points for a total outlay of $1600 or £1,243 at today’s exchange rates.
A 3-night stay at the Waldorf Maldives costs 360,000 Hilton Honors points – you can easily acquire the remaining 40,000 points by converting 20,000 Amex Membership Rewards points or even 26,000 Virgin Atlantic miles.
This method means you’d effectively be paying ‘just’ £414 per night.
Don’t get me wrong that’s still a lot of money and some people would never dream of paying that for a hotel room. But considering you get a 200sqm beach villa in the Maldives, at a property where cash rates are £2,000+ per night (once you include taxes and service charges), £400 a night is a pretty good deal.
Verdict
The Waldorf Astoria Maldives looks like a fabulous property and I’m pleased they’re not blocking points redemptions entirely or creating off-the-chart pricing levels à la Starwood. However, I’m apprehensive about the wider effects of this new 120,000 points per night pricing. Might we see other high-end Conrad/Waldorf Astoria properties following suit and prices rising sharply?
Either way, if you want to book a stay at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives without paying £2,000+ per night and don’t have several hundred thousand Hilton points lying around, this 100% bonus points offer from Hilton is a great way to do it.
The link to buy Hilton points with a 100% bonus is here
Have you used hotel points in the Maldives?
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