gsilliman

I do know for a fact that they do not participate in HH, but the situation is murky enough -- especially on Hilton's own web site -- that HH credit or some limited status recognition can sometimes be obtained, but this is not consistent, and is obtained only through an exception granted by some sympathetic individual hotel or HH employee handling the complaint. These hotels are not non-compliant, they simply do not have HH compliance included in their contracts with Doubletrtee, and they had enough clout to make these conditions stick.

I do not believe they are technically franchises of Hilton/Doubletree -- they do not use the hotel brands in their names -- rather, they have granted Doubletree a management contract. At one time, Doubletree made a specialty out of managing university-affiliated conference centers, and these hotel affiliations may be a vestige of that business.

One source of confusion regarding these hotels stems from the HH hotel search on the HH web site. Pull up any of these hotels, and there will be an HHonors logo with tag line and hyperlinks in the bottom right corner, and often another HHonors link in the "current features" section of the screen -- this is the Hilton "home page" for the hotel, and it sure seems to be linked to HHonors. However, under the "our Hotel" contents bar, there is no HHonors link -- different from almost every other hotel on the website. For the MIT and the Harvard Square hotels, you simply cannot pull up any hotel-specific HH ranking or other HH information from their home pages. Once upon a time, the MIT hotel did have that HHonors link, and it said something like "This hotel particpates as a level hotel" {i.e. blank}

I have learned this information over many visits, each time asking a question or two at the desk or of managers slightly differently -- and one occasion when I spent way too much time on the phone with HHonors trying to get breakfast coupons while staying at Harvard Square. My overall impression was -- the hotel staffs knew they were affiliated with Hilton, but knew nothing about HHonors; HHonors employees knew that these hotels were part of their network, but had no clue as to why they would not be participating in HHonors.