We recently flagged how, despite us living through understandably “belt-tightening” times in the travel world, you can still earn cashback on any Hilton stays.

The problem with the offer flagged is that while it’s a solid rebate of 4% for Blue or non-Honors members, it dives down to 1% for Silver, Gold, and Diamond members.

While we cannot better that cashback rate, we can introduce an additional sweetener!

If you sign up with Rakuten’s cashback portal via this link, and then book your Hilton stay via the site, you will earn a bonus $20 cashback on top of the 1% cashback you earn for the stay.

Note that the bonus $20 will apply to any spend of $20+ through the Rakuten cashback portal – it does not just have to be Hilton, and we have flagged some alternative spend options below.

Who should use this?

Anyone new to the Rakuten cashback portal should probably use the $20 sign up bonus regardless of their Hilton Honors status. Unless it is an extremely expensive stay, the extra 3% that Blue and Honors non members will receive via TopCashback is unlikely to outweigh the $20 bonus.

However, once the $20 sign-up bonus on Rakuten has been used, Blue and Honors non-members are clearly better off going through TopCashback, where the rebate is 4% rather than 2.5%.

Hilton Honors Silver, Gold and Diamond members can use either Rakuten or TopCashback for their Hilton cashback – it’s 1% in both cases.

Anything else?

Yes, we recently flagged the fact that cashback is widely available on travel through TopCashback. Rakuten has a similarly wide cashback offering on travel spend, so it is worth comparing the two.

In addition, Rakuten offers an “in-store” cashback service, which basically lets you add your Mastercard, Visa or Amex credit card and then have cashback automatically added to your account when you shop with a partner merchant.

This is well worth doing and then just forgetting about (although be sure to check your Rakuten account periodically to cash-out!).

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