Hilton does have policies for 'walking' guests who arrive as planned and cannot be accommodated due to overbooking or maintenance issues that take rooms out of service. However, those policies are rarely enforced currently. Management companies have made it clear that they are in no mood or financial condition to pay the usual consequences of turning away guests with reservations. In some cases, guests are getting walked for the usual reasons (i.e. overbooking or maintenance issues, But these days there are two other more common causes: hotels accept a 'buyout from a company or local government' and cancel all other reservations. More often than not, the hotel will make alternate arrangements and let people with canceled reservations know in advance of the change. But there have been numerous cases in which guests arrive to find that they are being moved to another property (usually one owned by the same management company, but not always a Hilton brand). Compensation is almost never paid in those cases.

The other recent phenomena is frankly sinister. Guests are showing up at some hotels (usually beach resorts in the southern US) to check in for reservations they made months ago when rates were low only to be told they have no reservations. In these instances, hotels have 'replaced' the low revenue reservations with ones made more recently at much higher rates. This is particularly apt to happen with low price reservations made by third parties. The hotel blames the lack of a reservation on the third party. There was a case recently of somebody arriving with a $119 rate who were left high and dry because the hotel is now getting north of $500 per night for the same room. The would be guest didn't learn the reason they had no room. They were just told 'sorry we don't have your reservation'.

In these cases, management companies set the prices high enough to cover the cost of any compensation they might need to pay. But, so far, Hilton has turned a blind eye to this and I am not aware of any case that resulted in the 'bumped' guest receiving compensation. That has been possible mainly because hold times at reservations, the Diamond Desk and guest assistance are so long that most people hang up before they make their complaint. People who write in are facing delays of weeks. In any case, most agents are referring cases that do reach them to the hotel, allowing them to decide whether to pay compensation or not. Most do not,