For decades, Hawaii was the crown jewel of airline award travel within the US. It was where you redeemed miles after stockpiling them all year or longer. But increasingly, travelers are saying it is no longer worth it.
What used to be a relatively easy redemption is now a struggle. Availability is tight, prices are up, upgrades are scarce, and the experience has changed. The individuals making these claims are not new to loyalty programs. Many are longtime members who used to book Hawaii year after year. Now, they are shifting their miles elsewhere.
Miles don’t stretch as far, and upgrades are harder to get.
Redemption levels have climbed across all programs. An economy ticket that once cost 35,000 miles round-trip now often requires 60,000 or more. Premium cabins regularly hit six figures, with little consistency or transparency. Dynamic pricing has made redemptions unpredictable and frustrating.
We have still found some value ourselves through perseverance and tenacity. For example, we have a lie-flat Hawaiian Airlines First Class award flight scheduled for tomorrow, which costs 70,000 miles, and an Alaska economy award for 35,000 miles next week. And another First Class award upgrade on Hawaiian to lie-flat for just 25,000 per person.
Compared to the cost of purchasing all these tickets, the value was better using miles. Yes, redemptions are still possible, but they have become harder to spot and are generally more conditional than ever. Saver space appears sporadically, and it often takes tools, timing, and transferable points to make it work.
Upgrades, in particular, have become the exception. Confirmable upgrade space has become harder and more complex, except for the most elite passengers. That has been true for quite some time. Other travelers echo the same trend. Upgrade space is often limited to waitlists that may or may not ever clear, or are tied to high fare classes. That has made using miles feel more like a gamble than an easy reward for loyalty.
The experience on board isn’t what it used to be.
Aircraft are changing, too. Widebodies with lie-flat seats and in-flight entertainment are being replaced on some routes by narrowbody jets with standard recliners and limited service. That makes it harder to justify the cost in terms of dollars or miles. Travelers who once viewed Hawaii as a premium destination are finding the product downgraded, even while the price climbs.
The expectation of an exceptional flight experience has become a wildcard. One traveler summed it up this way: they booked a trip for the lie-flat seat and ended up in a seat they would have never spent miles on, had they known.
When you spend tens to hundreds of thousands of miles on a trip, that kind of shift matters. The perception of value is slipping fast.
Hawaii hotel redemptions are following the same pattern.
It is not just the flights. Hotels that used to offer substantial value for points are now variable-priced and harder to justify. Oceanfront properties that were once 50,000 points per night can now top 100,000 during peak season. Even when using a certificate, fees may still apply.
One reader told us, “Even with a free night certificate, my ‘zero-dollar’ stay came with $147 in resort and destination fees.”
That has pushed some travelers to book Hawaii travel through OTAs instead of loyalty programs. In some cases, a cash booking through an online site offers a better deal than redeeming points, even at the same hotel.
For some, the redemptions are still there, albeit barely.
Not everyone has written off Hawaii as an award travel destination. Some travelers are still managing to score award tickets and make the math work, especially during off-peak times or with partner programs that have not fully adopted dynamic pricing.
However, that has become the exception, rather than the rule. What used to be a reliable value play now requires daily searches, flexible dates, knowledge of fare buckets, and sometimes the use of third-party tools. For most travelers, that is too much effort for an award that used to be relatively straightforward.
And when loyalty programs raise redemption costs without warning — as recently happened with HawaiianMiles, where award flights jumped as high as 250,000 miles one way — travelers take notice. You can read more about that in our article, HawaiianMiles quietly rewritten: Travelers now face 250K award flights.
We have heard from many readers who feel let down if not outright misled. Some are canceling their airline credit cards. Others say they are abandoning airline loyalty altogether and just using up as many miles as they can.
The ripple effect goes beyond loyalty programs.
There is a broader message here, especially for Hawaii. The travelers who are moving on are often the ones who came back using awards every year. They were not just filling seats. They were booking longer stays, spending more per trip, and influencing others to follow.
When those travelers start looking elsewhere, it is no longer just a mileage story. It is a warning sign and it signals something deeper. It means the islands may be losing ground not only in value, but also in trust and emotional connection. And that’s the kind of shift no algorithm can patch.
Do you agree or disagree? We welcome your comments.
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This merg with Alaska has completely ruined using your miles. We’ve always bought a coach ticket. We would then use miles on Alaska or Hawaiian to upgrade to first class. Now Alaska no longer let’s you upgrade using miles. Hawaiian no longer has a direct flight from. San Diego to Maui. I will probably trash my airlines credit cards. No longer worth it.
Very disappointed!!!
Well a little different slant but a needed correction.
I am.a resident of Maui
Fly Hawaiian regularly.
It cost me only 17k to fly from Maui to LA each way this September
Yes the miles help as long as you take advantage of them in the proper months.
Trying to get good use of miles to Hawaii in June-August is not happening.
Planes are full without mileage free rides. Use them wisely.
I am also going from Maui to LA in October round trip for 35 k miles.
All about dates you book.
Be flexible and you get great use of miles.
Do not trust the airlines, and the service on the airplanes has really gone down.
Hi there,
This my be off topic, but why are minivan rentals so expensive this year? Is inventory down? Can’t find a reasonable deal.
Am a yearly visitor to Maui since 2014 using points for both hotel and flights on United. Lately, I’ve been only getting 1 cent per mile value on United coach from Denver. For Summer 2026, I can fly to France for 40k points vs 51k for Maui and get 4 cents per mile value. Pretty easy to make the decision where to go
Good riddance to award travel.
The airlines are wasting billions on an archaic remnant of the past.
I am so tired of reading the comments from flyers that demand “free”
flights and upgrades they “earned”.
No other industry wastes so much time, energy, and money as the airlines frequent flyer programs.
You obviously have no idea how airlines work. The airlines’ profit center is selling miles to credit card companies.
Miles that are earned through purchases and flights are then used for “free travel”. So, yes people are concerned about their “free travel”and, yes people want value. And, yes people have ownership over their mileage usage.
This isn’t rocket science. A quick Google search would show you what I just stated.
And, true no other business messes with mileage like airlines, but Ford is a car business, Glock is a firearm business, but the airlines are in the mileage sales business. Flights are secondary.
Hey Dave,
I get it, you don’t want to give up your “Free” perks.
You obviously have no idea that businesses evolve.
“Earned” freebies will be like VHS tapes, Cable TV, and landlines: Obsolete!
The airlines are doing what every other business has done in the past five years: Charging more for less.
Deal with it.
As others have said you have no understanding of the airline industry. In the US at least airlines are essentially banks that happen to operate aircraft. Their rewards programs are worth Billions of dollars and the only reason Delta and United are profitable is due to credit card deals.
Agree completely with BOH on all points in this article. Being retired I can spend the inordinate amount of time necessary to research the best airline and hotel redemptions required for a trip to Hawaii. However, the redemption value today is significantly less than it has been in the past. Long term this will not help Hawaii’s travel industry, and this will economically affect everyone who lives and works in Hawaii. Once the desire for aspirational travel to Hawaii is gone, it will be extremely hard to get it back. Once people get comfortable with alternative vacation destinations elsewhere, they probably won’t ever be back to Hawaii, sadly.
Don’t despair! If you’re willing to fly in economy there’s still plenty of opportunities to use your points to get to/from Hawaii.
Tips: 1. Do multiple searches to get a sense of what a “good” points deal is. 2. Use PointsYeah (free up to 8 alerts) or another service to set alerts for your itinerary (better if you have some date flexibility). 3. Use Google Flights to track the price. Sometimes the cash rates are just too cheap for points to make sense. 4. When your points alert triggers, book asap. 5. Modify your alerts to a lower points price. 6. If the points price drops, rebook at the lower rate and get some points back.
This summer my family of three completed three HI-West Coast trips. 4 of 6 flights were booked with points with excellent value (overall we used 162K points to save $4,300). We’ve also already booked our Thanksgiving travel with points roundtrip for solid value. All economy.
I knew a couple who signed up for the Hawaiian Airlines credit card and upon being approved received 50.000 miles in which they redeemed for free round trip airfare from the west coast mainland to and from Maui. Each person signed up for their own individual card so outside of their timeshare costs all their trip was free. I don’t know if they charged home improvement, groceries, utilities, or used the spend a dollar receive 2 miles game after that. No wonder first class went to 6 figure mileage redemption costs.
For over twenty years we have used miles and stayed in Hawaii for three months! That may be no more!
All this is true but what about us folks who live in Hawaii and want to see the world? We have no choice!
I think BoH has it right. ‘Loyalty’ is ‘old thinking’, and has little to no ‘cash’ value any more. As I keep saying, ‘people gotta fly !’. Which means that if the airlines get together, like the oil companies, it will no longer be a ‘price’ decision maker in planning your trip, but a schedule one. No food, no comfort, no service? So what? They will all be the same, the company will be in the ‘green’ financially, and equally important, the ‘stockholders’ will be happy. The pax? Well, ‘ya gotta fly!’, so grin and bear it.
The frequent user/guest programs started and were for decades very loyalty oriented. Now they are more and more about alternative revenue streams and less about building brand loyalty.
I believe we will discover, over the coming few years, which companies are focused on building loyalty through a better experience for the traveler, and which will focus on the least expensive entry product and then charge, charge, and more charge for everything else. In my mind, the latter is the antithesis of loyalty and positive brand building.
JS
If every airline flies the same aircraft to HI (as in Boeing 737/Airbus 321`neo), and the service, or lack of it, is the same, where does ‘brand loyalty’ come in? It doesn’t, so like I said, as far as the future is concerned, the Schedule will be the deciding factor for the vast majority of folks, not the name on the airplane.
I’m dumping my HA master card. It will not provide any significant benefits, not even the paltry ones the other cards provide. Miles will become meaningless as the number required for any benefit will continue to increase rapidly. One less billing to attend to each month.
Annual Hawaii travel…..after 25 consecutive years of travel to Hawaii the thrill is gone and not returning anytime soon.
>>> For decades, Hawaii was the crown jewel of airline award travel.
We understand this site is Hawaii-focused. But the latest articles on planes, airlines and air travel greatly overstate both the value and the importance of Hawaii’s tourist-centered air travel market.
If Hawaii truly was at the top of reward-miles redemption, Hawaii’s eponymous airline wouldn’t have gone bankrupt. The truth: Hawaii isn’t even in the same service universe as LatAm, Emirates, China Southern, Turkish Air, as well as the massive international routes of Delta and American.
The most coveted ticket, and the one travelers spend the most award points on, are international first and business class tickets to Europe and Asia. It’s not even close, nor debatable. Their air markets are easily 10x the size of Hawaii. Those long-haul widebody first and business class international tickets are many orders of magnitude more expensive than any Hawaii airfare. This is the pinnacle.
When is enough enough
Definitely agree with BOH on this one. We’re traveling to Kauai on United in February from Denver, meeting up with friends traveling from Pittsburgh, also on United. Our friends used 52,000 miles that saved them only $512. Their tickets still cost $2386, $1112 of which was to move up to Economy Plus!! Almost half the cost of the entire ticket. Premium seating is where airlines are now making their money. For us, the only benefit of a loyalty program is the free checked luggage and the once a year access to their lounge. Loyalty though should go both ways, which the airlines apparently believe is something they don’t have to consider.
I finally moved full time to the mainland 2 years ago. But really Ive been back and forth for the last 5.
This was the first year I have not gone back and I think Im done.
Its just true. There are Fat too many other locations that are just much easier and cheaper to visit and, quite honestly, just better than Hawaii (please dont curse me auntie lol).
It’s almost going to take that 7 years of rest for everybody to see how they really need each other.
We hate the tourists, but we like their business. We hate growth and development, but we like cars and shopping.
Just close the borders for 3 mo ths of the year. No flights in or out.
We were “captured” on Maui during Covid. For a while there were only 3 flights per week going into and out of Maui. Rental cars covering fields near OGG didn’t have emissions going into the air. The colors on the out islands were much more vibrant through the cleaner air. Traffic – there was none. Not wishing for a return of anything like Covid but there were silver linings.
Tianu
Beautifully put. One line says it all. We hate the tourist’s but love the business. Thanks for being so honest.
I have flown Hawaiian 4 times non-stop from the East Coast and a bunch of interisland flights. On our first three trips, my wife and I were able to use points to use lie flat on the return, nighttime flight. On the fourth, after Alaska took over, the cost had sky-rocketed to 6 figure points and the cost to upgrade was ridiculous (and we were told we could only upgrade one seat, how stupid is that?). I have had good results on Delta and JB with points.