ggozz

Hilton's Best Price Guarantee is some kind of marketing scam that is intended to never be honored. Even if you are Hilton Honors member for years.

Hilton lies about the 3rd party prices and they also use discrepancies in room descriptions to deny the guarantee.

I previously reserved a room through Hilton. A 5 night stay in Puerto Vallarta for $336 per night. A few weeks later one of the 5 other couples going with us saw that expedia/travelocity had cheaper rates for better rooms. They had a "terrace suite" for $292 which had a second balcony with a jacuzzi on it where my previous room was just a normal room with a balcony overlooking the pool. Before I called Hilton I turned on my VPN which placed my IP address on the other side of the United States and opened a incognito tab. The travelocity price was still coming up as $292 and HIlton's lowest listed price for that room was $455. Sweet! I thought. So I decided to call HIlton.

I should have known this was a complete farce when the agent seemingly asked out of the blue "what is the square footage of the suite" after I had told him the name of the room multiple times. It was the only room that has the word "terrace" in the title.

Since travelocity has every room listed as having the same square footage I told him to hold on while I double checked. I had seen that they often won't price match based on room description differences so I went to HIlton's site and saw the "terrace" room sq ft and confirmed to him that the room was 613 sq ft. I wasn't about to play semantics. In hindsight I realized Hilton knows that Expedia/Travelocity has these rooms listed as having the wrong sq ft listed and that was going to be the representatives go-to reason for declining the price match. Anyway, the representative then said he was seeing that room with that sq ft for $455 the exact same price that Hilton themselves have it listed as.

I told him no room on Travelocity is listed over $330. He said he was seeing it on their website as $455 again and said I must be a member to see those prices. I told him I logged into a vpn and used incognito and have never registered with travelocity or expedia their parent company. He basically said he was not seeing those prices and wouldn't be able to price match.

I then asked the representative why would I keep my reservation through Hilton and not book through Travelocity? I would be saving $220 total.

His response is what really upset me. He said, "Well if you book through a 3rd party site Hilton can cancel or alter your reservation at any time for any reason."

Thanks HIlton! Trying to scare me with the threat of losing my room if I buy the cheaper rate, awesome.

I contacted Hilton customer service and guess what? They tried to play semantics. They said " We have no control over third party bookings therefore we don't have the ability to cancel it." Which is total lip service. They know that is not what was implied. I book with Travelocity and Travelocity books with Hilton and they most certainly can cancel or alter that booking if they so please. The rep who originally threatened me was essentially saying 3rd party bookings can and will be canceled in situations like the hotel overbooking...

I had also taken a screenshot the night I originally saw the cheaper price, the next day, and then even the following day when the price jumped a whole $3 to $295. All Hilton's customer service said was "sorry our agents couldn't find the price you saw." You saw it 3 times in my screenshots!

What I gathered is that Hilton lies about price guarantee when the extra 25% will put them below what they will get from the 3rd party site. When Travelocity was listing $292, Hilton would then have to give me a price of $219 per night because of the extra 25%. $219 is probably significantly lower than whatever they are getting from Travelocity. I had no idea about the 25% extra until their customer service sent me a link to the terms of their guarantee. All I wanted was to have direct booking and get points. But since this is the last time I will ever use HIlton, I don't really care about the points.

Normally I would say don't even try to call and get the price guarantee but I really think everyone should. It will expose HIlton's price guarantee as a sham. If you aren't going to honor 3rd party prices by playing semantics with descriptions and lie about what the current rates are listed as, why even have a price match? You are just going to lose customers with your shady practices. And those who do get the price match are likely customers you already had. It just seems like a net loss overall.

tl;dr Hilton lies about the listed prices of 3rd party websites and they bank on discrepancies in room descriptions to deny the price guarantee so they don't have to refund an extra 25%.