Hilton HHonors - 55 NIGHTS POSTED - 5 MORE TILL DIAMOND

I am closing in rapidly on Diamond (should have it as of August 17).

For all Diamond members, do you feel the extra time you put in with Hilton was worth it? What do you like better about being Diamond vs. Gold?

Also, please indicate if there really is such thing as a separate phone number for DIAMOND members, without posting the phone # here of course.

Thanks.

I was comped Diamond 2 years ago as part of an AMEX trial with my company and have requalified each year since, so, I can't really comment on the Gold vs Diamond question. I will tell you that I have never had a problem receiving upgrades, breakfast, etc. as some of the Golds in this discussion have mentioned.

Yes, there is a Diamond # that is usually answered by a live person on the first ring. Very helpful arranging stays and special requests (paid and award).

Please also see:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum57/HTML/000628.html

In my opinion..
The best perk of being Diamond is that you have no black out dates for award usage. Just booked up a stay in Orlando over Thanksgiving that showed no availability until I reminded the CSR that Diamonds have no black out dates. Sweet! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

At Diamond level, there's a valuable feature (to me) in that you can 'bump' someone else out of a room at a full or soldout property, with the 48 (or is it 72) hrs advance notice. The gotcha here is that you will be charged the prevailing room rate (or some such language) for the room, which sounds mysterious, I'll guess they 'bump' a reservation from a more profitable room first, ...

You may be able to counter this high rate, and get a better rate, if you're staying at a location where your company has negoiated preferred rates, say a local agreement with a local property, etc (local is the key word here). Sometimes this is called last room availability, meaning your company gets the 'last room' at their negoiated rate, no matter what type room it is. You can then get into a sold out property, and get the preferred rate, too.

[This message has been edited by JadedTraveler (edited 08-07-2001).]