Hilton HHonors - Award Redemption Online?

One of my biggest complaints about the hilton website is the fact that I have been unable to make an award reservation on-line. Today I went to check out my account balance and there was a rotating banner that said something to the effect of "Did you know you can make award reservations on-line" So I clicked on it and got this really strange screen that says Echo Epsilon and has the address of https://echo.epsilon.com/index.aspx.

Are they trying to se this up? Has anyone got this to work? Hopefully they will fix this because it is long overdue

Try http://beta.hilton.com/

I believe you do need to login in before the booking award feature shows up.

Is this as the url suggests a beta test site? Or the real deal?

It definitely is a beta site, but it is enough of a "real deal" that works quite well in terms of showing availability (and non-availability). However, I have not yet actually completed a booking using the site.

I made a reward reservation on the beta site shortly after it went live in February. The reservation appeared in the travel planner on the normal Hilton site immediately, and I had no problems with the stay, which was last week. As far as I can tell, the beta site works just fine.

I made a reward reservation on the beta site shortly after it went live in February. The reservation appeared in the travel planner on the normal Hilton site immediately, and I had no problems with the stay, which was last week. As far as I can tell, the beta site works just fine.

I have made at least 3 award bookings using the beta.hilton.com site. No problems whatsoever.

The beta site is a wonderful tool -- and long overdue. I've used it to make two award reservations. Though the stays are yet to come, I had the reservations show up in my travel planner immediately, and I've got the certificates printed out. A really nice and simple process that eliminates a lot of the hassle and uncertainty that was in the HHonors award process. Now I hope they get the award reservation system some flexibility with making a wider variety of awards and such. But this is a big step in the right direction.

After posting the beta web site yesterday, I decided to actual try to use it for the first time for a booking, as opposed to just playing "what if" games.

I logged on to http://beta.hilton.com and attempted to make a reservation for an award stay at the Hilton Garden Inn at BWI Airport, checking in on May 13th for one night. The web site showed “Hotel Reward Standard” (a green check mark) as “Available” for 20,000 points (Category 2). However, when I attempted to book the award reservation, the following statement appeared: “Hilton Garden Inn BWI Airport is sold out for the days you specified. You can choose different days, or select from the list of alternate hotels below:”


I then phoned the Diamond Desk. Not only were they able to book the award reservation for the specified night, but they were able to do so at a Point Stretcher rate (12,000 pts).

Hence, I am disappointed that the web site would contradict itself and not let me book a one-night award stay. But then I would have been more disappointed (as in "angry") if it had let me book the 20,000 pt stay and then I had found out that a Point Stretcher was available.

Guess there is a reason why it is still a Beta site.

(The above scenario has been sent to HiltonBetaFeedback@hilton.com)

Beta has worked fine for me so far. In fact, I like its format better than either Marriott or Starwood. I like the fact that it shows me an entire city of HHonors hotels, I can sort by availability, and it'll show me hotels even if I don't have all of the points required for the stay. Therefore, I can book a stay and then go about rustling up the necessary HHonors points for the award.

Marriott's site is, in general, buggy and frequently requires me to shutdown and start over. Starwood won't even show me hotels unless I already have enough Starpoints for the award.

And for what it's worth, on both of the HH awards I've booked through beta, the comparable and most-nearby Starwood was booked up for awards. They had rooms for sale via a variety of third-party sites, but they had locked up their award inventory. So the big knock on HHonors about availability and the big praise for Starwood regarding same didn't hold true in these two cases for me booking mid-quality weekend award stays.

Thank you HH for a decent award booking engine...

I'm sitting in the DT-Westwood (using the free h/s internet) on a reward stay that I booked on the beta site. So I guess it worked. They also had my breakfast coupons for me, w/o asking.

I used the beta site for a 3 day stay in Paris and it worked just fine.