I am staying, again, at the Hilton at JFK next week. There are few (any?) reasonable hotels at JFK but this is the last worst in my experience. I received the customary week before arrival email offering a chance to upgrade for just over 5,000 HHonors Points. At 10 points per $1 spent that’s $500 of spend, but with so many promos you can often get this number of points for a lot less than that.

This is my current reservation:

You can see the offer at the bottom.

Now, I should get an Executive Room being a Hilton Diamond member but this property never upgrades Diamonds; it just gives them access to the lounge. I know my stay will enable me to snack there in the evening but with a 6am flight I will be gone before breakfast. This cuts the value considerably.

So, I thought I would have a look at the web site and see how much the upgrade would cost for cash:

Wow – $9!

I’ve rebooked to the Exec Level for the $9 and am hanging on to the 5,306 points requested.

AARP membership almost pays for itself with this one stay you may notice. Non-US members can join, and indeed I do have a card which I can show if challenged.

You can read my review of the property, (from May 2015) here.