Originally Posted by writerguyfl

What is your complaint about?

Any time you complain to Hilton Corporate about an issue at a hotel, it takes extra time to resolve when compared to contacting the hotel directly. This is the journey a complaint takes:

• Guest goes to Hilton.com to make complaint.
• Complaint sits in a queue at Corporate until it's read by a human.
• That human (#1) sends the complaint to the hotel using the brand's proprietary system.
• Complaint sits in a queue at the hotel until it's read by a human.
• That human (#2) sends the complaint to the appropriate department at the hotel, usually by email.
• Complaint sits in an email in-box until it's read by a human.
• That human (#3) does whatever is necessary to address the complaint. (Although this may involve contacting the guest directly, that's not always going to happen.) Human responds to the email with the resolution.
• Resolution sits in an email in-box until it's read by human #2.
• Human enters the response into the brand's proprietary system and sends it back to Corporate.
• Resolution sits in a queue until it's read by a human.
• That human (#4) verifies the response and contacts the guest.

If at any point, one of those humans needs clarification of something, more time gets added.

In contrast, if you call the hotel during normal business hours, you have a far better chance of talking directly to a human that can fix your problem on the spot. That fact tends to speed up the process. And as a bonus, if the hotel can't fix the problem, you can then elevate the complaint to Hilton Corporate. You'll probably get more help from Corporate if you lead with "I tried talking to the hotel, but they never returned my calls".

Source: In one of my hotel jobs, I was human #2 in the above scenario. I was responsible for monitoring our brand's complaint/compliment software. Although it may differ with Hilton, we were given 72 hours to address each complaint. That clock resets with every communication. By that I mean, if human #4 at Corporate doesn't understand something in the resolution, they will respond with a question and we'd have 72 more hours to respond.