Hilton HHonors - If you wish to become Diamond, is it smart to pool you and wife's HH account?

Business couple friends of mine each travel and stay at H. They each have HH separate accounts and separately not enough stays that each becomes Diamond. From what they told me, together they would be a Diamond or very close. Would they have any advantage or disadvantege to merge their HH accounts?

Definate advantage in my opinion! You will lose out on are the 1,000 points/quarter online bonuses. I imagine qualifying as a Diamond is worth "losing" 4,000 points/year.

You may, depending on you and your wife's habits, also lose out on HHonor promotions. For instance, you would have only received 50,000 points had you met the requirements for the recent CNTU promotion. Keeping the accounts seperate would give you the option of receiving 100,000 points.

The advantage of the program is that you and your wife gain 50% bonus per stay, no blackout dates, dedicated Diamond desk to sort out all your needs, and top-notch service to name a few services.

You might also want to search under "Mutual Fund" in this forum for some other opinions.

FT

[This message has been edited by FT (edited 10-04-2002).]

oops my bad

[This message has been edited by keywestbars (edited 10-04-2002).]

[This message has been edited by keywestbars (edited 10-04-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by best:
Business couple friends of mine each travel and stay at H. They each have HH separate accounts and separately not enough stays that each becomes Diamond. From what they told me, together they would be a Diamond or very close. Would they have any advantage or disadvantege to merge their HH accounts?</font>


Keep separate and gain points through the various promos. As stated above, "Keeping the accounts seperate would give you the option of receiving 100,000 points."

The upgrades are not worth missing out on the bonus points.

Once both partners have mega points and wish to start redeeming, then I would pool to attain Diamond status.

[This message has been edited by Sweet Willie (edited 10-04-2002).]

They might also want to check the Honors policy on "ownership" ofthe mutual fund balance if they should decide to go their separate ways -

If one spouse stays just a few times/year, then I think the mutual fund is worthwhile (as long as the other spouse is gold or diamond).

That way, the spouse that seldom travels can get the full package of perks that his/her spouse has achieved.

The ease of booking awards as a Diamond easily makes up for any loss in bonus promos in my opinion. Throw on top of that upgrades and additional bonus points and it's a no-brainer in my opinion.

It really depends on the circumstances. My wife and I work for the same company and our jobs require we stay in a hotel (Hilton) one day a month each. Neither one of us qualify even for gold status with twelve stays a year. Our two accounts combined net 24 stays, but by adding a couple of paid weekend stays we are able to keep our Diamond status.

Have we found Diamond very valuable? YES! There is no denying we have lost some 50,000 point bonuses, but we have gained so much more. Good example: Next week we are going to Rome, (a hotel we were never able to book even when I was complimentary Gold). The hotel is sold out, rooms start a $450 per night and we are utilizing a six night award stay.