scoow

Consecutive nights at the same hotel counts as one stay. Therefore, you would have to find another HHonors hotel in town and swap between the two each night. In some places, you might find (for example) a Hampton Inn and a Homewood Suites that share a parking lot, so you just have to grab your bag and walk across the parking lot each day.

DevilDog438

You also need to read the terms of the various bonus offers. Quite often, they require a stay with a "minimum" number of nights - most typically two, from what I have seen.

pedxing

I thought you were going in a different direction, reading the title only... That you were asking if you really needed to stay the night or just check in!

FWIW, I can answer that question: You only need to check in. I had a weird change of plans a few years back where I checked in and was then sent home by the company. I did still get points since I checked in. But the funny thing is, I told the front desk that I was unable to stay the night and they re-rented the room to someone else and refunded my money but left the points! They said it was too much of a hassle to redo the points, so I got stay credit and HHonors points for $0! Wow!

rdchen

HH T&Cs-Accrual of Points, Section 3:

pauleeepaul

2-3 years ago I had a big nasty longhaul itinerary in J ticketed on BA and had to cancel the trip and refund the ticket. I got points for all of the flights. More than once i have thought of doing it again.

todorovic

I am not quite clear how you came up with 1300 miles/night. The way I see it, you will get 500 miles/night using the fixed miles option plus 150 miles for CC purchase (Hilton is charging you so you only get 1 mile/dollar). I think you are counting 500 miles bonus twice, unless you get 500 miles for every res. made through continental.com (credited by CO) in addition to 500 miles from Hilton. If this is the case I am going to open CO account and pile up points just by staying in Hiltons.

Maybe someone else can clear this up for me.

demigawd

I see. Darn, though I guess it'll be useful in situations where you travel with the spouse and you both have separate Hilton accounts and can swap out each day.

Hmm, so is this program a good value in your experience compared to SPG and Marriott Rewards? I understand the Double Dip program is nice, but how does it stack up to the sheer accural power of the other two, considering Marriott's Vacation packages and SPG's 1.25:1 milesoiints ratio?

demigawd

On Continental.com it says you get 500 bonus miles per stay for booking the Hilton. It doesn't say anything about needing a Hilton Hhonors account or a Hilton credit card, so I took that to mean that you get it just for booking through the site, which means it should stack,

todorovic

I beleive that that means that if you book Hilton and at check in give your CO account number you will get 500 miles for the stay. It is true that you don't have to be HHonors member and you certainly don't need their affiliated CC for those miles to post to your account.

Going back to your original Q, your best bet is to hop between 2 Hilton properties every night and choose fixed miles. If you can't/don't want to do that then choose variable miles and pay with your CO CC. That will net you approx. 13,500 miles (45 days @ $150/day). However, I would encourage you to seriously consider hotel hopping and sign up for HHonors AMEX. If you do, you can still get approx. 7,000 miles but can get much more in terms of HHonors points. Following is the breakdown of points you can potentially earn:

45 stays @ $150 = 67,500 base points
45 stays @ approx. $175 (including taxes) = 39,375 bonus pts. for using AMEX
35,000 bonus pts for opening AMEX card (this is the 50,000 pts offer advertized on FT - only 35,000 is really the bonus; the other 15,000 comes from spending $5,000)
45 stays x 500 bonus pts for online booking (from AMEX) = 22,500

Somewhere along the way you will hit first Silver and then Gold status with Hilton so there will be more bonus pts. coming your way.

A rough estimate is that you can earn close to 200,000 HHonors pts (and almost close to 250,000 if you forgo CO miles and go for points and points option with Hilton) which translates into a very nice vacation anywhere in the world. You can easily get an equivalent of $3,000-$4,000 worth of hotel stays if you use your pts in the high-end properties. I think this is much more worth than 13,500 CO miles.

I hope this helps.

demigawd

Thank you, it does help quite a bit. So in your opinion, the Points and Points option is preferable to the Miles and Points option, then?

IF booking through Continental.com stacks, then I would be getting an additional 500 miles per night, along with 500 points for booking with AMEX and 500 miles for the fixed miles + points option. So if I hotel hop, that that's 1000 miles per night + 500 points per night AMEX bonus + 150 points per night base points + 175 additional AMEX points.

With hotel hopping, that comes out to 825 points per night + 1000 miles per night. Is that right? That's like a free weekend vacation per month...

KENNECTED

IIRC, booking through continental.com might not be an "eligible" stay as it would be considered a "third party booking" as you are paying continental, NOT Hilton.

demigawd

From the Hilton website:
Continental is an airline partner, so I think that means we're home free to stack rewards. VERY cool if that's correct.

demigawd

Say, does anybody want to refer me? Lots of points in it for you!

KENNECTED

I should have been clearer, I meant the "packages".

craz

Does CO.com do it any other way?? Can I Only book a Hilton Hotel w/o even flying on CO??

I would have thought the only time CO will sell me a Hotel or Car is if I have a tkt to fly on CO. Then the question is if CO simply bundles the hotel and/or Car rental together with the flight purchased and thusly it will show up to HH as a Pkg and then you get the 'We are sorry, but your 45 night stay does not qualify for Credit or HH pts....'

It would be great if I can make a HH res via CO and get all the bonuses for doing so and yet still get all the HH credits.

Also OP Im not sure if Homewood and Hamptons give 500 pts per stay. When it comes to Miles they only give 100 while all other HH props give 500. So the same maybe the case with HH Pts.