Hilton HHonors - Reservations @ Hilton.com Overhauled!

The reservations engine on Hilton.com has been totally overauled. Check it out:
http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/reservations/index.jhtml

I think I like the calendar feature. Haven't had much chance to play around, though.

Pant, pant, salivating, has Christmas come early???? Online award booking????? No, it couldn't be. I must be wrong (tell me I'm right!).

Searching Hilton Torrey Pines, La Jolla, CA, first week in May I came up with these rates:

BEST AVAILABLE RATE (DJ) HILTON.COM
AAA STAY AND SAVE (AA)
AARP RATE (RE)
EASYESCAPE-STAY AND SAVE LATER (EK)
LA (LA) ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE REQUIRED AT CHECK IN What the heck is that last one? Rate Code LA? I click on details and all it says is
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Plan Description:
LA
ORIGINAL CERTIFICATE REQUIRED AT CHECK IN
ONE CERTIFICATE PER HOTEL STAY </font>

Anyone?

The system is now suckier than it ever was. I tried to get rates for a new year's eve stay and it tells me the date are out of range (&gt;365 days).

12/31/02 worked fine for me.

Must be user error. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/tongue.gif

Well, I hope it's user error too, but I was looking for rates for the LAX Hilton, and I got a list of **EVERY SINGLE HILTON PROPERTY IN THE U.S.**
Now, I wouldn't wade through so many pages if they gave me a 500,000-point bonus, let alone 500!

Well, the back button now does the sensible thing which is good.

-- Dambus

If you're looking at a bunch of hotels to compare rates, the new system remembers the dates you entered for the first one when you look at the rest. Good deal.

I've seen the "LA certificate" thing come up as well. My first guess was that it had something to do with the energy surcharge class action settlement - but I don't recall the terms of that deal (valid on any rate?).

Personally I think they still have some work to do... I don't really stay at Marriotts but their reservation system is the best so far.

It shows rates and availability for a series of hotels in a given city. I was hoping that HH would do that... so if you entered Dallas it would come up and show you the full spectrum of Dallas HH properties, availabilty and rates. That would be ideal, rather than sifting thru each property back and forth, that still annoys me. I typically go to a site like travelocity and use the advanced search for only "Hilton Brands", find my best option and then book on HH.com.

But at least it seems that you don't get that jumbled mess of 4 pages of rates 1-20, 21-40, 41+, etc. This version is a lot "cleaner."

While far from perfect, and still in need of more work, this is definitely an improvement. Let's hope they don't become complacent and continue to make improvements. Online rewards booking should be a priority.

KUDOS to the Hilton IT department, I can now look up on-line and change reservations I made through the call center!! THANKS!!! Like we all have said... on-line award booking should be next...

It seems the script reads the date on your computer. It doesn't like the format the one on the Mac I am using.

? Why would it need to do that?

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by terenz:
It seems the script reads the date on your computer.</font>

If that's true, it can easily result in various manipulations. Not good from the fraud protection standpoint for Hilton, IMO...

OTOH, I've made several reservations yesterday evening using the new interface, and was quite pleased with it. One reservation though showed screwed up rates (not the ones I've booked at, and in bizarre fashion - two separate rates for a one night stay!) on the confirmation, although the total amount (including taxes) was correct. A call to the Diamond desk confirmed that everything looks correct in their system, so it must have been a strange fluke. They also re-sent me the confirmation e-mail the way it was supposed to look like.

I called the internet help desk and they asked me if the date on the computer was set right (mine's set by web time servers) as if it should make a difference. From that, I gather the web site must use the time/date on my computer for whatever reason.

The new reservation system, fyi, may have intelligence built into it based on your historical stay habits. Prices for hotels you stay at often, when logged in, may take away the lowest fares, especially the pre-paid value stays (even when the box is checked), and/or list them very far down at the end.

This may be a glitch in their system or CRM at work.

So it's best to check rates w/o logging into your account?

Tech support said to flush the cache before you start a new browser session. Probably a good idea to clean out the cookies too.

Here's more:

The date problem (javascript application problem) generally happens with Mozilla or Netscape 7. There are some JS and other irritations with IE but it seems to work.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by terenz:
Tech support said to flush the cache before you start a new browser session. Probably a good idea to clean out the cookies too.</font>

Balderdash! This is a commonly used line by tech support reps. It is possible this had some effect on early generations of browsers, but doing this doesn't do anything. (Although, for the Big Brother wary privacy paranoid, this is regular maintenance.)

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by terenz:
The date problem (javascript application problem) generally happens with Mozilla or Netscape 7. There are some JS and other irritations with IE but it seems to work.</font>

Now we're getting to the root of the problem. One of Microsoft's monopolistic maneuvers has been to introduce non-standard features and commands into it's version of Java/JavaScript. It is having exactly the effect they intended: making you switch to a Microsoft product, in this case, dumping Netscape or Mozilla for Internet Explorer.

GUWonder, you're speculating, right? You're just saying that it could be designed to this, right?

I'm skeptical, if nothing else because the overall performance of Hilton's website(s) seems sub-par, and I'd speculate the development unit would find integrating such technology very challenging.

Nevertheless, it seems it'd be easy to test, and I'm interested if anyone actually sees such trends.

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited 11-22-2002).]

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Rut Dog:
GUWonder, you're speculating, right? You're just saying that it could be designed to this, right?

I'm skeptical, if nothing else because the overall performance of Hilton's website(s) seems sub-par, and I'd speculate the development unit would find integrating such technology very challenging.

Nevertheless, it seems it'd be easy to test, and I'm interested if anyone actually sees such trends.

[This message has been edited by Rut Dog (edited 11-22-2002).]</font>

Speculation... but CRM engine that was being marketed specifically to the lodging industry (according to a certain PWC "expert" contributor to industry reports).