Agreed. Updates are updates, irrespective of how pleased (or 'disturbed') they make us.

What's the trick?
 

There is not much to tell other than what I'd already said: When planning a trip, look for hotel-specific deals, in addition to chain-wide deals that are usually known to FTers. I also often get email alerts about special deals from HH, depending on the types of promos that I had elected to be notified about in my profile. Let's take a specific example: My 12/10-12/15 Hilton Hawaiian Village stay, which I decided to do to kill two birds with one stone by taking advantage of UA's DEQM promo to get to 150k EQM, while also getting enough HH points to get me one stay closer to HH Diamond. In other words this trip was nothing more than a mileage run (MR) and a point run (PR)! Hilton was, of course, running the Q409 double bonus points on base point promo, and then there were HHV-specific packages that were offered when I went to book, and I selected 10,000 HH points + a Hilton bathrobe for a stay of at least 4 nights. Plus, booking with ANY AMEX gets you a 500-point booking bonus, and then paying the folio with HH AMEX card gets you 6 points per dollar spent, which means that using your HH AMEX to pay for most of your travel expenses during a stay would net you a load of bonus points. Adding it all up yielded what I had posted:

AMERICAN EXPRESS POINT BONUS 17,268
DOUBLE POINTS Q409 OFFER - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 13,267
Base Points - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 13,267
HAWAII CLUSTER 10,000 PTS OFFER - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 10,000
GOLD VIP BONUS - 25% 2009 - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 3,316
AMEX CO BRAND ONLINE BOOKING BONUS - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 500


UA DOUBLE DIP - HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE 1,326 (NETTED 20k UA MP EQM for the trip that got me to 155k EQM for 2 extra SWU).

I hope that helped somewhat..;).

BTW, tonight I just made HH Diamond for the first time ever, but this is also the first time that I'd actually set out to attain this level. Let's see if the Diamond benefits are significantly better than those for Gold (I doubt it from hearing Diamonds relate their experience here).

SOME details finally posted
 

Don't get TOO excited, because the link to register isn't operational yet and the referenced HHonors website also isn't up, but...

http://homewoodsuites.hilton.com/en/..._hhonors10Q1/#

Here are some details. Runs January 7th-March 31st. It is a free night (apparently unrestricted) every four stays or ten nights. You can earn up to three free certificates.

Actually, one part says "now" through March 31st, and another part says Jan 7 to March 31st. Hopefully, they will clean up that obvious contradiction.

If the enrollment link remains inactive until (almost) the 7th, I'd say that synchronizes the "now" part.

Will an award stay count as a qualifying stay?

"Offer cannot be combined with other select promotional rates or bonus points and/or miles offers. " -T&C

How much you wanna bet the Jan sale will not count. If so; that would suck big time.

Wow so the free night is good anywhere? This a a great deal. It kills SPG. HH will get all my paid business this quarter.

Maximum of three free nights? Weaksauce.

The Cert. is good for 12 months...now that rocks!
I wonder if you can use them at Waldorf Astoria properties?

That part is quite weak.

they are taking it out of all of our accounts with the new increases of 20%
and the link doesn't presently work

Can I register more account to earn more free night?

It may be possible, if parhaps against the T&C's of HHonors. However, such action might make any desired status harder to attain.

Pertinent questions...

- Can the free night be at any hotel, including cat 7?
- Any capacity controls on the free night? Same availability as a points reward?
- Is the free night cert issued immediately after the 4th stay is credited (like the 25K points in the Q4 promo) or sometime later?
- Will award stays count? (Probably yes, same as the Q4 promo.)

Assuming the above are answered favorably this will be a great promo. It will also be nice if you can redeem the free nights online.