Originally Posted by
B747-437B
Class of travel is the only way to pretty much guarantee the Hilton.
The only benefit *G has is the priority lines to pick up the voucher and go through immigration. Which can easily save you an hour at the worst times.
Just used this twice in the past week. For the OP I'd request your vouchers at the departure airport rather than wait until you get to ADD. Sometimes the queues at the transit counter can be long and they have a bad habit of not paying attention to the Clould 9 lane which is supposed to receive priority.
I could only get the Hilton from the staff at Narita (*G in Economy), but the contract staff who handle ET flights here are totally incompetent (multiple mistakes, not only this), so they put the wrong dates on our vouchers and didn't stamp them. Immigration in ADD wouldn't accept them and sent us back to the transit counter. At this point, ET staff took the Hilton away from me and put us in the Friendship International Hotel (it was perfectly fine but not the Hilton). I argued about it for a good 5 minutes to no avail. Really pissed me off that they took my Hilton voucher away. In hindsight I shouldn't have given it to them because I actually have an Ethiopian visa so didn't need the transit visa package, just a hotel voucher. My partner needed a valid voucher though for the transit visa and I stupidly gave the staff both vouchers together.
On the return I got the vouchers in Cairo but didn't request the Hilton since the Cairo staff initially said they didn't have our vouchers pre-printed and would have to get them in ADD. The check in agent surprised me at the gate when he handed them to us. This time it was the Empire Addis International Hotel. Again, the hotel was fine, but it's not on the main street, you drive back a dirt (mud) road around a block to get to it. Fine in a car, but a problem later when walking out to do anything.
As for passport stamps, this time they did put stamps in our passports. The first day it was both entry and exit. The following week it was entry stamp only, and no exit stamp.