Originally Posted by
jbandy10
I do have Hilton Diamond and a good amount of points as well, but from what I gather, the SF Hilton properties are all very much meh.
SPG is of course on the table post-merger.
Indeed, the Hiltons are kind of meh. I've stayed at the Union Square one - adequate hotel, not particularly memorable. Nothing bad happened...it was just a regular Hilton.
On the plus side, there's this: Hilton has devalued their program to hell, making San Francisco a comparatively high-value place to use points. Marriott still has a more sensible category structure that makes redeeming points in lower- and medium-cost markets somewhat attractive. In Hilton, the best place to spend points is now at the very high end, because property caps for awards are still in place.
$100/nt Hampton Inns in Iowa are 30-40k points. The FS Hiltons in San Francisco are 55-60k, even when all decent rooms in town are $500/nt.
So for an SF stay with Diamond status, I'd be very tempted to spend my 240k HH there and save my Marriott points for another day. It's hard to find high-value places to burn HH anymore, whereas you can still find many good uses for Marriott points even post-merger.
And it's also a town where *not* having a breakfast benefit can have substantial cost, assuming you'd still want to get a decent breakfast if you didn't have it via status.