GUWonder

For those status matches which I pursued last week, Hyatt granted status matches that are applicable for the duration of the trial period in which the challenge is taking place. No such "premium room reward" pricing scheme there to devalue points to the extent that some Hilton customers and others have already really faced this year.

... and Hyatt is much better about advance notice when it comes to changing prices in points for its affiliated properties.

lewende

Why not just book the standard award room? Premium award redemption is not the best way to spend those points. After all, there is an option available right now to redeem "premium" rooms and you definitely have every right to decline such an option.

GUWonder

... indeed, as that property is quite routinely giving complimentary upgrades to anyone who has any Hilton elite status.

When all that is left are "premium rooms", the opportunities to escape Hilton HHonors' customer-unfriendly "premium room reward" pricing scheme will not be any greater even for Diamonds.

Keyser

marriott will also give you status during the challenge....spg will not....

JHunter

C'mon, folks - I am obviously not debating whether one should redeem a minimally better room for a 167% increase in points. It's just another example of the absurdity of Hilton's premium room pricing.

deant

I believe the real key here is the extreme capacity controls that Hilton is placing on award reservations. Look at Bora Bora. They have a total of 122 rooms. In the past, standard awards were "Lagoon View Suites". They had 16 available (approximately 13% of the rooms). Now they are restricting the definition of standard rooms to ONLY "Twin Lagoon View Suites". This reduces the 16 prior "standard" rooms to only 3 under the new definition. This reduces the award rooms from 13% to less than 2.5% of the total available rooms.

What is to stop EVERY hotel from restricting award rooms to less than 2.5% of the total available rooms and considering everything else as "Premium"? The answer is ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. In fact they can reduce the number to less than 1% with creating the proper definition of "standard" for that specific hotel.

I agree that they can charge whatever they want for a "Premium" room but they should have a reasonable number of "standard" rooms available.

Moorea

Exactly. Well said.

tsastor

The general public (non-FT:ers) would probably assume that standard rooms constitute the majority of the capacity at an individual property. However, the same general public would most propably not assume suites or bungalows to be considered as standard rooms. That these are at all offered as "standard room" redemptions is a great benefit IMO. How great, depends of the number of rooms available, of course.

msc75

And don't forget, even if the 3 standard rooms are available for CASH , if the capacity in their minds have been met (whatever that is, probably 1 room only on any given day), you can't book the room with points. Blatant violation of T&C. This is where I have a problem with Hilton because I don't like being lied to as a customer. If your own rule means nothing or you can't enforce it, don't advertise it.

Guava

What do you think? Am I?

lkar

I guess if the number of beds in a room that is otherwise exactly the same is a basis for calling it standard but the other one premium, you're pretty much exactly correct.

I wonder what's next? "Only rooms bearing room number 811 will be regarded as standard."

GUWonder

Rather than blaming most of the properties, better to focus upon Hilton Worldwide/Hilton HHonors management -- most of the time, most of the redemption problems (pricing being the big one) arising from this "premium room reward" scheme won't be due to the Hilton hotel property itself.

Most Hilton HHonors-affiliated hotels don't have much if any incentive to change things so as to see a substantial reduction in the number of redemption stay-related room nights they get, at least not during the course of most of the year*. That's because of the combination of the following two conditions: 1. the marginal increase in property's revenue resulting from redemption stay bookings is coming in via room rate levels approaching pretty close to regular paid revenue rates for standard rooms at the time of the stay; and/or 2. the marginal increase in property's revenue arising from redemption stay bookings generally exceeds the opportunity cost of not reserving a given room for only regular paid rate bookings.

It's high-occupancy hotels during peak periods that are being incentivized to play games, but otherwise it is actually Hilton Worldwide/Hilton HHonors management that is incentivized to play the biggest game of all. In other words, the big winner in subjecting HHonors customers to this "premium room reward" scheme to fleece customers by reducing the value customers get from redeeming points is Hilton Worldwide/Hilton HHonors. The properties in the main have little to no incentive to play such games except at the busiest of busiest times or unless they think they are dealing with customers in a largely inelastic demand market where there's a substantial opportunity cost of not reserving a given room for only regular paid rate traditional bookings or cash upsells.

Nothing about this situation has yet come to surprise me. Enronesque games played by Jeff Skilling (of Enron), Jeff Robertson (of Delta Air Lines) and Jeff Diskin (of Hilton) aren't really a surprise as certain incentive structures in certain corporate cultures are much more likely to foster making a mockery of relationships than is the case elsewhere. Getting creative in fleecing others isn't all criminal, but that doesn't make it all right either.

azepine00

If you believe in this, no reasoning from my side can convince you.

I do not think that offering premium room for multiples of original redemption rate while cutting basic room award availability is an improvement in any way shape or form. YMMV.

FD1971

Repeating it over and over again does not help your cause, so what about letting Enron rest in peace.

You still fail to understand basic structures of the industry and it continues to show in every post.

Therefore, I feel obliged to start at the beginning of the loyalty schemes.

The original idea of loyalty programs was brilliant and it was brilliant, because airlines flew amazingly low load factors ( shortly after the first steps of deregulation and long before complete deregulation kicked in, about 5-6 years after the act was signed ) therefore had tons of surplus capacity. One should not forget that airlines, back in the days,were smart enough to black out the high demand periods, the few periods that actually saw demand up to 100%, for point/mile redemption for quite some time.

Now they still do it, but use more subtle tactics.

Establishing a link to hotel schemes now, we still face the same problem.

If a hotel operator expects to sell out, there is absolutely no incentive to give away rooms for award redemption for the hotel operator.

And please be smart enough and do not let yourself be sugarcoated by marketing blabla advertising no black out periods, no capacity controls etc.

So there is hardly any incentive for any hotel to give away award rooms during high demand periods, some may give out a room or two to oblige with the official rules...

HHonors new scheme changes the whole calculation and will motivate hotels to offer more award rooms, simply because they will be reimbursed differently by HHonors

This will very likely reduce the gap between revenue through a regular booking and revenue generated through an increased amount of points.

Under the old rules, award redemption was not possible after the capacity was gone ( with some exceptions for top tier members ) thereby frustrating the vast vast majority of customers.

Under the new rules, you can still snatch a room for the regular price, when you are quick ( and believe me, the silent majority is just reading FT, but acts accordingly. You would be surprised how many awards are claimed these days starting exactly one second after the window for redemption opened, which can be anything from two years to 300 days for some airlines )

We are talking about millions of customers per program, in the case of AA more than 50 million users and even if 0.0001 % want to go to Vegas on a Friday or to a resort in the sun over X-Mas, you will face a bottleneck, not to mention that even more potential customers will be in the game for the seat or the room as well during those high demand periods via regular bookings and credit card points...

As pointed out numerous times now, it is still a business for everyone involved and one with a very low ROIC over the last 30 years...

As of today, there are enough examples of people being able to book regular rooms at all hotels in question aside from the official communication by HHonors stating that they are having problems with IT, so everything will be fine. Some rooms will be available for the regular amount, except at a few hotels and more rooms will be available for a high season upcharge, sounds like a free market economy to me. So the demands by some people in this thread that every hotel should be forced to do this and that is actually quite funny, it is an independent business in a free country…it is not a five year developed by a Government.

So nobody is fleecing anyone here, but people have to understand that this a business, so getting something continuously for a price below market value is very likely not going to happen, especially if more and more people brag about their super-smart redemption on the internet, the infamous zero balance

The new options will give hotel operators new incentives to offer more capacity and if the incentives are good enough, most of them will offer more capacity to fill rooms during periods when demand is expected to be relatively low.

FD1971

If you are running out of arguments, it is ok. Your SPG and Hyatt examples were solid to a certain point and I do consider both to be superior to HHonors in aspects like transparency, value for money and giving advance notifications, but they are far away ( especially Hyatt in recent months ) from Transparency International and The Salvation Army.

Award availability at certain Hyatt properties is very very limited and from time to time I would appreciate paying 10,20,30 % more for an award room.

And what about C&P at certain SPG properties ( some do not even participate, because they could not come up with a deal witrh SPG ) not to mention SPG and their issues in Dubai

And isn't Hilton paying for breakfast for its Gold members whereas SPG is not even taking over the tab for their even more loyal Plat members...

Again, why should any hotel be happy letting rooms stay empty?

Where is the incentive for HHonors to lose customers?

And did you complain about the points palooza in recent years in the first place.

Do not take this personal, but the fact that you are from LA is giving it an even more ironic spin. Staying at the LAX Hilton just recently, I overheard this beautiful conversation of two guests in the Exec Lounge complaining about the congestion on the freeways and that all Governors did not invest enough in recent years. Five minutes later they demanded that all taxes should be reduced asap...