Originally Posted by
ijgordon
PL is a great way for hotels to "secretly" "dump" excess room inventory. Obviously now there is a lot of that excess room inventory with occupancies where they are. So there are a lot of GREAT deals on Priceline... it just doesn't make sense to pay 2x the price just to earn some points (of dubious value, apparently)...
This is exactly where I stand. I book rooms through Hilton.com and pay a premium over PL to get HHonors points. Now the accumulated value of my points doesn't justify that price premium. With this change it becomes cheaper and easier to forget about HHonors altogether and just PL all the time.
Angela at HHonors, write this down:
Say I have ten hotel stays coming up at an average cost of $500 each on Hilton.com, or $400 each via Priceline. I pay the cumulative $1000 (10 X $100) premium to book via Hilton.com, in order to earn 50,000 HH points. These points are good for one room-night that would normally cost a maximum of $400.
I have spent $1,000 for a prize worth $400.
Or -- I book those stays via Priceline, pay $400 / stay, and use the $1,000 I saved to buy four or five additional room-nights anywhere I want.
I am not as big an idiot as HHonors perhaps thinks I am.
