Originally Posted by
El Puerco Volante
Wrong move,Hilton.
Previously I booked with FHR/Virtuoso @ W-A.
Included breakfast and additional benefit of top made sense.
Now with the free breakfast as Diamond,I will book the cheapest prepaid rate,as the FHR/Virtuoso benefit (usually 100$) doesn't justify price difference between FHR/Virtuoso and cheap pre-pay rate.In most cases,it is.
So Hilton loses :
1 - Customes paying higher rate
2 - Customers spending additional money on restorants/SPA, as in most cases the FHR/Virtuoso 100$ lured me to spend more there.
And the gain? Making happy a couple of bums,spending their Honor points from CC signups or work stays @ Hamptons on a W-A stay and getting free breakfast.
Hilton has been doing few rights things lately,but this is a mistake.
If you want to make your program attractive - offer guaranteed suite upgrades as SPG does.
Regards,
El Puerco Volante.
This doesn't make any sense. At all.
(1) Virtuoso/FHR are totally independent of traditional hotel status. Comparing those benefits to Diamond benefits is irrelevant. Lots of hotels also offer breakfast-included rates or property-credit-included rates independent of FHR. They're still going to keep offering them in 2018. Diamonds can decide if those rates are worthwhile or not. If you liked the two full breakfasts, $100 property credit, and other unique amenities that FHR gives you, why wouldn't you keep booking those rates? What does the Diamond at the next table eating a muffin have to do with it? If FHR is marking up their rates to cover the benefits, then the "benefits" really aren't...
(2) If you weren't going to book a prepaid rate before, why would you book one now? The free muffin doesn't make me want to book a prepaid rate. Like, ever.
(3) How does the Diamond benefit make one less likely to spend money in the spa or on other amenities? I will pretty much never pay for a hotel breakfast - frankly, they're all overpriced - but I'm often willing to pay for a hotel dinner in the same restaurant, where the quality/price is often in line (or close enough to it) with other fine dining in the area (at a W=A anyway). Why would I stop doing this?
(4) I earn points across the HH brand spectrum and redeem at the higher end. If that makes me a bum, then I guess 99% of the brand value proposition for Honors is targeted at bums. The whole reason they have this entire portfolio of brands is to capture *all* of your hotel stays if they can - whether you're roadtripping at Hampton Inn, doing a business trip at Doubletree, or going on a luxury vacation at W=A. If they didn't want to do this, and didn't advertise the crap out of their top-tier properties even to people who stay at HGI, then they'd just spin the rest of it off and call themselves Waldorf. If you don't like this, maybe you'd be better off at a niche luxury brand like MO or FS.