Originally Posted by
DiamondTruth
I am a Hilton HHonors Diamond member by revenue (not by stays or nights) and have been staying in their hotels for more than 10 years for most of my annual vacation now. The rates found on their website used to be fair and best prices for a long time and if better rates were available on Hotels.com, Diamond desk used to match them. However, they now seem to be bolder in their best price promise as the advertisement is all over the front page of the Hilton website "ALWAYS GET THE LOWEST PRICE". However, I have now been finding tons of much better rates on all sorts of other websites, you just need to visit TripAdvisor, Trivago, etc. and when raising these issues to the price claim people, they just revert back saying that these are opaque rates. I think the people working in that department do not even have a clue what opaque means as these rates are spread all over the place and easily bookable and not at all hidden or packaged. They started to turn down each request that "requires a voucher to check in" (which is literally everything) and a very clever move to push back on most requests pointing out to them where better rates are available. This is very frustrating as I have been going through the hassle to complete this form to get the same rate that is available on other sites. I have been finding rates where the Hilton website (with the best price) is 200% more expensive than the cheapest deal. Why to hell would you still continue to book on their website? I am not travelling and blowing away corporate travel budgets but spending my own money on personal trips so I do care about the fact that I can get the same hotel, the same experience (like the Trivago TV adds say) but at a much better price elsewhere. This is very disappointing and I feel that they should either remove their best price promise and all the bla bla promoting it when their in fact is no best price available or match the cheaper rates found. Could this even be an interesting case for a US jury? I wonder how many people have been fooled by this promise? I am very, very disappointed and will probably just throw away the Diamond card and book the hotels at half price and less.
Your observation is quite correct and my experience has been identical. I have simply switched my business to Marriott - they are far less than perfect but are leaps and bounds better than Hilton in adjusting rates when other websites have lower rates.
I feel this is a deliberate strategy of avoiding claims that is pursued by HH, which is why I have no motivation to give them my business, when there are other alternatives.