I have a plastic Hilton HHonors "Gold VIP" card with 9-digit account number with my name on it, that has 04/2007 printed as the expiry date. The last "My Way Account Summary and Deals" e-mail I seem to have gotten from Hilton was in August 2008. That email said I had 45k points and my last stay date was July 2008.

In April 2009 I seem to have requested my Pin and Password from Hilton - as I have some emails from them along those lines. In May and then again in Sept 2009 I booked a room at a Hampton and Hilton using the HHonors number. I don't seem to ever had any "Account Summary / Details / Activity" emails as a result of the activity in 2009.

I have an upcoming trip and I tried to log into Hilton using various combinations of my HH number/pin/user-name/email address, but none of them worked.

I don't really care about any points I might have had - I'm just wondering why the account is not valid anymore. With FF programs (for example) your FF number never seems to expire or "die" even if your points do.

So would a HH account number that hasn't been used since 2009 have been "deleted" from their system? Why?

If I have a stay coming up at a Hilton (Hampton) would I benefit in any way to re-activate the old number (or obtain a new number)? By benefit, would I get any perk (at the property in question) by having an HHonors number attached to the confirmation for the upcoming stay?