Easy points: Earn 5,000 Hilton points (enough for a free night!) by enrolling in dining program

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Did you know that you can earn tons of bonus points for money you’d spend anyway simply by enrolling your travel credit card into airline and hotel dining programs?

Registering and linking your card is easy. Whenever you spend money at a participating restaurant, bar, etc., you’ll receive bonus rewards on top of the rewards you’d normally earn anyway. For example, if you register your Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card with a dining program, you’ll earn:

• 3 Chase points per dollar for dining purchases
• Hotel or airline rewards (usually between 2 and 8 points per dollar)

That’s what we call “double dipping” your points earnings.

Plus, programs usually offer sweet intro bonuses to draw new members. Such is the case with the Hilton dining program!

Easy 5,000 Hilton points with the Hilton dining program

Hilton is currently offering 5,000 points to new customers who are not currently enrolled in the dining program. Note that you can already have a Hilton Honors account — you just need to be new to the dining program.

Here are the terms:

• Sign up for the dining program here
• Find a participating restaurant here
• Make at least $25 in eligible purchases (including tax and tip) with your enrolled card
• You can dine in the restaurant or order takeout/delivery
• Third party apps like DoorDash and Uber Eats do not qualify
• Complete an online review of the restaurant within 30 days of registering your account

That’s it! If you live near even a moderately sized city, there should be plenty of participating restaurants. Plus, you’ll earn points for the spend at the restaurant itself:

• Basic members – 2 Hilton points per dollar (if you elect to not receive emails from the Hilton dining program)
• Select members – 5 Hilton points per dollar (if you elect to receive emails from the Hilton dining program)
• VIP members – 8 Hilton points per dollar spent (if you elect to receive email communications from Hilton Honors Dining and have already completed 11 qualified transactions in the calendar year)

Again, all these earnings are on top of whatever your credit card normally earns for dining.

5,000 points is an uncommonly high bonus for joining a dining program (they usually hover between 1,000 and 2,000 points). We estimate Hilton points value to be about 0.5 cents each, making this bonus worth $25 on average. If you’re interested in earning even more Hilton points, signing up for a Hilton credit card is another quick route.

There is no real Hilton award chart, but Hilton prices all its hotels between 5,000 and 120,000 points per night. That’s right, it’s possible to get a free hotel night simply by enrolling in the Hilton dining program. I wouldn’t count on it, however, as 5,000-point hotels are few and far between — and usually far, far away. As an example, you could stay at the Hilton Garden Inn Bali Ngurah Rai Airport — a great starting point if you intend to explore Bali.

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Featured image courtesy of Hilton.