Compare the Features and Benefits of Hilton Honors American Express Aspire® Card and
Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card

I’ve long said at MilesTalk that I think the Hilton Aspire is the best hotel credit card on the market.

Setting aside the welcome bonus, here are your yearly benefits:

Hilton Resort Credits – $400: If you stay at Hilton resorts twice annually (although it must be one time January to June and one time July to December, this is as good as cash.

Airline credits – $200 ($50 per calendar quarter): Easy to use if you fly once per quarter

Hilton Honors Diamond status – $950: This could technically be worth a couple thousand if you stay frequently at Hilton properties (and a certain site I won’t name would say it’s worth over $3,000), but that would also likely mean you don’t need this card to earn it, since you’d earn it from nights stayed.

Even if you only stay 10 nights a year, the free breakfast or daily food credits and lounge access for two would be conservatively worth ~$70 a day. Room upgrades are never guaranteed, but they are frequent in my experience. Let’s call those ~$25 a stay even though that’s very light as a value given that some upgrades are likely to be suites.  If you stay 10 nights a year, Diamond status is worth $950 using the calculations above.

Annual Free Night Certificates – $500: Valid any night of the week and good at any Hilton properties in the Hilton portfolio. with no points limit. It’s not going to be hard to pick and choose where to use that for maximum value and at any Conrad or Waldorf-Astoria at a busy time, $500 is easy. I recently redeemed my own for the Waldorf Astoria Pedregal in Cabo for a $1,500 night room!

I won’t value the potential free second or third weekend night since those do require $30,000 and $60,000 in spend.

I also won’t value the $189 CLEAR+ credit as that is available on so many other Amex cards.

Total Tangible Benefits from your $550 in annual spend? $2,050

I mean, that is NUTS. And I hope you can tell that if anything I tried to assign lower values to perks than they are probably worth! If anything, I undervalued them. The only thing is that you obviously need to stay at Hilton hotels or resorts a handful of times a year to enjoy the benefits. And really, if you don’t, then you likely don’t need a Hilton credit card.

Rates and Fees for the Hilton Honors Aspire® Credit Card

All information about the Hilton Honors Aspire® Credit Card has been collected independently by Your Best Credit Cards.

If you are a small business owner, I strongly recommend that you carry all three Chase Ink credit cards: the Chase Ink Business Unlimited® Credit Card (this card!), the Chase Ink Business Preferred®, and the Chase Ink Business Cash®.

They all work together as what we refer to as a Chase business credit card “Trifecta.” The Chase Ink Preferred® allows you to transfer points to Chase’s Ultimate Rewards airline and hotel partners like United, Hyatt, and British Airways.

But then it makes sense to also get the Ink Business Cash credit card and Chase Ink Business Unlimited credit card to maximize your total earnings on bonus categories – since all points can be combined to your Ink Preferred.

Here, with the Chase Ink Business Unlimited credit card, it is your “default” card for your business spend. What I mean by that is that if the purchase you are making isn’t in a bonus category on your other cards, you would put the charge on the Ink Unlimited for 1.5X Ultimate Rewards points. This way you are never, ever getting less than 1.5% back on your business purchases.

There is no limit to how many Ultimate Rewards points you can earn on the Chase Ink Business Unlimited credit card, all at the 1.5X multiplier.

However, it is very important to know is that although this card states that you are earning cash back, that is only if you don’t also have a Chase Ink Preferred®, Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, or Sapphire Reserve® Card.

Yes, you are earning Chase Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Ink Business Unlimited credit card.

But without one of the above credit cards, your only redemption option is to cash out your points for 1 cent per point, meaning that, on its own, it’s a cash back card and the points have an actual cash value of 1 cent each.

Assuming you do have an Ink Preferred®, Sapphire Preferred® Card, or Sapphire Reserve® Card in your wallet, however, you’ll be able to move your points from your Ink Business Unlimited card to any of those other 3 cards, where you will be able to transfer to airline and hotel partner programs like United and Hyatt – or redeem for travel via the Chase Ultimate Rewards portal where your points are worth either 1.25 or 1.5 cents each, depending on which card you have.

The Ink Preferred and Sapphire Preferred offer 1.25 cents a point while the Sapphire Reserve (with its $550 annual fee) gives you 1.5 cents per point when booking travel in the Ultimate Rewards portal.

The bottom line is that the Chase Ink Unlimited is simply a staple in the Chase Ink family of business credit cards. It backs up the Preferred and Cash with that 1.5% “floor” on rewards – and all with no annual fee.

When using our bonus spend calculator on this card, you’ll notice we ask you if you also have a Chase Ink Preferred®, Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, or Sapphire Reserve® Card. That’s because, if you do, we’ll increase the value of rewards on this card from 1 cent to 1.75 cents accordingly accounting for the ability to utilize Chase’s point transfer partners.

Please note: you must be under 5/24 (more on the Chase 5/24 rule) to apply for this card and you cannot apply for more than one Chase Business card in any 30 day period. You can apply for a maximum of two Chase cards within 30 days, with only, at most, 1 of them being a Chase Ink business card (or any Chase business card).

This card is also mentioned in the article Business Credit Cards That Don’t Report to Personal Credit Bureaus.