As a points and miles enthusiast, I analyze whether annual fees make sense every year for my different cards. My Hilton Aspire card has a hefty annual fee. If you want to check out the different Hilton cards American Express offers you can check them out using my referral link here. As always this is not required, it is a way you can support my blog if you choose.

Let’s start with the hefty annual fee of $550 a year. Yes, you read this right, this is a premium card. I’ve had this card for a few years. We have kept it in our wallet since 2019. We got it for our trip to Munich. The hotel had an executive lounge. When traveling with a family of four food is a major expense. With this card, you are automatically given Diamond Status when you stay at Hilton. It is their highest status tier. Our diamond status got us all into the lounge for breakfast and dinner. We did not pay for these meals for the entire trip. This lounge also included free sodas, bottled water, fancy coffees, and wine! I have no idea how much this saved us but I assure you it was significant. We have used this benefit in Amsterdam, London, Dublin, New York, and Chicago.

If you want to see if a hotel you are staying at has an Executive lounge you can search for it like this in the app:

Click the 3 lines I have circled at the top of the page

Select executive lounge on this menu and hit apply

List of hotels in Nashville with executive lounges

Executive lounges are a great way to save money when traveling. However, I don’t have any stays booked at Hilton for the rest of 2025 (yet). I need to figure out if it is still worth keeping this card.

Here are the benefits we will use with this card and the value I find in it:

Hilton Honors Annual Free Night Night - we will use this. I plan on using this Free Night Certificate (FNC) at Cloudmore Resort outside Chattanooga. We used it last year for my birthday and I plan on doing the same this year. You can read more about this resort here. This will save us at least $500 on the room. We will pair this with a Hilton Aspire Resort credit of $200 to pay for our dinner.

The list of approved hotels and resorts you can get the credit for can be found here: Hilton Aspire Resorts

I was about to cancel this card last year until I saw this new resort outside Chattanooga. It is a quick drive from Nashville and we loved the resort. I am looking forward to going again soon.

This card does come with a Priority Pass for Airport Lounge Access. I get this from many other cards too so I will not include this in my totals. However, if you want Airport lounge access and do not have this from other cards this is a plus.

This card also comes with a $200 airline incidental credit that you can use for $50 each quarter.

I use this credit for early bird check-in for my Southwest flights. This is a normal expense for me when I am cruising or know I will be busy when it is time to check in for a flight.

This card also gives me free CLEAR membership a $199 value. I would not pay for CLEAR membership I rarely beat the tsa-pre check line when traveling but I have used it a few times when I did. So if you have the card I recommend getting CLEAR.

Last but not least, my husband stays at Hilton the majority of the time when he travels for work. We charge his travel expenses on our card and we get reimbursed. When we charge his Hilton stays to this card we get 14 points per dollar for eligible Hilton purchases. This includes not only his room charges but if he charges his meals to the room we are also getting the extra points on those too.

With his Hilton Diamond Status, we get a food and beverage credit when he stays at Hilton. On his last business trip, I used that credit for my meals. It saved us $36 a day.

Hilton aspire card

oops I almost missed a bonus

Chase Hyatt card