Kitmick1

Good evening all,

I have an upcoming stay as a Lifetime Diamond for a special occasion and they have advised me they do not upgrade nor offer the breakfast as per the Hilton Diamond required benefits. The rate is almost $1000 per night and am concerned about these issue. Has anyone had any experience recently with this property? Please note this comes directly from Senior Mgt at the resort. Please do not recommend calling the Diamond Desk as you only go to a regular Hilton rep who has no power nor ideas to address this situation.

retiredfromhilton

Not sure what your dates are, but the hotel is fully booked for the much of the next few months. That generally precludes complimentary upgrades. The hotel is not required to offer upgrades if its revenue management system or in-house reservations determines that the suite you want should be held empty for last minute (very expensive) sale.

In any case, the upgrade benefit is subject to availability at the time of check in. If there is a suite type that you really want, you might want to speak to the hotel's Front Office Director about a discount on a paid upgrade.

pauleeepaul

Excellent advice. A modest copay per night for a negotiated upgrade can be $ well spent. Whether or not you think you are entitled to the upgrade for free is irrelevant.

demue

The upgrade is one thing, but how can the property wiggle out of the breakfast requirement? That is not optional as per the T&Cs:

MY WAY DIAMOND MEMBERSHIP HOTEL BENEFITS: Waldorf Astoria™ Hotels & Resorts
- Space-available upgrade to a preferred room
- 1,000 Hilton Honors Bonus Points per stay
- A daily continental breakfast in the hotel's designated restaurant for you and up to one guest registered to the same room each day of your stay

Is this some Covid rule they use to weasel out of that? Charging 1k$ a night and then such cheapness, I'd not give them a dollar of my money but YMMV.

cjd

We stayed at the property in 2019. At that time, they gave Diamond members a $15 credit towards the $25 continental breakfast where as a Diamond member, one of the benefits listed for the stay at this Waldorf Astoria hotel was a complimentary continental breakfast for the two guests in the room. Full buffet at the time was $35. When they emailed me near the end of our stay, asking for my thoughts, I did tell them how much we had enjoyed our stay but brought up this advertised breakfast benefit up with management. They did say they would look into the matter and resolved it with me to my satisfaction by giving me a credit on the final bill. Very surprised that they now state they do not give any breakfast benefit at all to Diamond members as this is not in accordance with Hiltons benefits for Waldorf Astorias. For your information, there is an existing thread on this hotel: Boca Beach Club, A Waldorf Astoria Resort {US-FL}

ben1233

This is simply not true. I’ve been upgraded more often than not. During my very last stay in December, I happily paid $110 extra a night for a room with a giant 5th floor patio (I wouldn’t call it a balcony as it’s quite large). The $110 was a discounted differential between the room type I had booked and the room type I was after. There are only ~9 of these rooms at the beach club so they are hard to come by. Breakfast comes in the form of a $15 credit which I believe was changed to be a general F&B credit.

As another poster mentioned, right now operations at the Boca Resort are very restricted. The tower, cloister and yacht club are all closed, thereby greatly diminishing room inventory. I’ve noticed that this has driven rates up to a degree that I’ve never seen. This could be why you received the message you did regarding upgrades. So YMMV in this difficult environment. While very nice, in good conscious I can’t say the BBC commands $1000 \ nite.

hfly

uhhh, you do realize that Kitmick1 was not referring to a PAID upgrade, right? Wow, do they have only NINE of those rooms??!! I have often been upgraded to Presidential suites and the like at Hilton properties as a Diamond, you know, the ones that they only have ONE of, and it's done for free for me as a Diamond. Thank you for proving everyone's point about this property.

ben1233

To clarify, all of my upgrades have been free except for one, and that was because I was jumping up several room categories. The 9 rooms that I’m referring to are the same standard size of the rest of the rooms, except they have large patios. Another handful have a small balcony on the second floor, and other handful have ground floor patios. There are a few suites, but honestly I prefer the rooms with outdoor spaces. Due to the limited number of rooms with outdoor spaces,, I would never expect a freebie upgrade, especially with 80% of the property shut down. An upgrade to an ocean view or ocean front room is probably more likely to happen.

Hopefully this addresses your anger (issues).

hfly

As a Lifetime Diamond, if there is availability I expect an upgrade each and every time that I stay at pretty much any Hilton related property, except those that only have one sort of room (Hamptons and the like), so do all Diamonds, or for that matter any top tier member of any main Hotel program. Also I would think that if you frequent that property (or any other) as much as it seems that they should be upgrading you for free irrespective of whether you are Diamond or not. BTW, Freebie upgrade? It is part of the program, or is supposed to be, and for those of us who have spent hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars at Hilton family properties, it is not a "freebie". Next you are going to say that it is great that you get away without a "single" surcharge, or that you feel lucky that you did not pay for your kid to stay in your room. And yes I have a real problem with this property.

Super Mario

I was at the Resort in October, and was "upgraded to a Bungalow" which was available for purchase at a $1400 cash rate due to the capacity limits. Was a great stay, but I would never pay so much.

I don't envy those who work there and dealing with all of the DYKWIA. They don't understand the complexities of such a business. One person may stay for a month, paying an exorbitant rate, and never say a peep. Then the DYKWIA comes in for the weekend and wonders why they aren't getting the suite they saw online.

hfly

Well we are not talking about suites per se, we are talking about upgrades. Something which I just automatically receive maybe 95% of the time that I stay at Hilton family properties. When the other %5 of times happen it is due to one of three things, either the hotel is fully booked, or very close to it, and they are unable to do it...which is perfectly fine. That the length of stay makes it impossible to do for the duration of the stay, because the hotel or at least the higher level room is not available at some point in the stay...which is also fine, although most of the time when this sort of thing happens they will say something like, "we are sorry that we cannot offer you an upgrade right now because the hotel is fully booked tomorrow, but are happy to move you to an upgraded room the day after tomorrow" (or whatever). The third is the most insidious, a staff which is either not trained well, is too lazy to actually go through their lists and make proactive decisions, or is specifically trained to treat such upgrades of Diamond's with contempt, something that this property has often been guilty of in oh so many ways.

Alpinetrekker

Looks like this property and the Boca Raton Resort are leaving WA and Hilton. Saw this on the Hilton website...

"Effective July 15, 2021, this hotel will no longer be affiliated with Hilton or the Honors program. Stays booked past this date will not accrue Honors points. Please contact the hotel directly with any questions."

rbw5t

wow, not much notice. I’m scheduled to be there between Christmas and New Years, as a Diamond on points. I’m assuming they’ll honor the reservation. But I guess I shouldn’t count on any Diamond benefits. (Not that they gave much anyway). I wonder what happens if I cancel after 7/15? Would I get my points back?

Alpinetrekker

I would probably verify that with Hilton and the property. I've read about a few other hotels that have re-flagged with a different brand or gone independent and in those cases, points reservations weren't honored because once the relationship between the chain and hotel was severed, there was no way for the property to get reimbursed. They might offer you a special rate to compensate?

hfly

Good riddance.