amanuensis

Oy vey, I practiced unsafe reading. Because I aspire to be a professional nitpicker, your blog post inspired me to write that most posters in this thread used the term "aspirational" instead of "inspirational" in reference to the hotels that they no longer have enough points to stay at.


BTW, in reference to the paragraph in your blog post where you wrote about Hilton's past "misdeeds" in making negative changes to the Hhonors program, for me the honeymoon was over many years ago when Hilton gutted two-way points exchange. Sure, Hawaiian still is an option for making miles into Hhonors points, but all of the airlines that I actually have point balances with are no longer options.

LowFlyOver

It's not quite that bad. However, the best value I personally get from SkyPesos is to cash 1,200 of them in every year for a relative's subscription to Time magazine. Saves me $30 out of pocket, and yields 2.5 cents per mile (without factoring in miles otherwise earned on a $30 purchase). There is silver lining everywhere.

jerry305

I have sorted the 77-page PDF by category: in Word, and in Excel.
Thanks to lazytravelers.net for hosting.

LINK: Hilton HHonors HotelCategoryChart as a Word doc
LINK: Hilton HHonors HotelCategoryChart as an Excel xls

pinniped

DL...SPG...Amex.

AA...HH...Citi.

UA...MR...Chase.

I hope the DL-SPG thing proves popular and inspires the others to do something similar.

Wonder if a rental car company will want to get into these crossfunctional partnerships. Marriott and Hertz have done some co-branded promotions over the years that were deeper and more involved than the typical bonus mile promo - that's probably the closest thing I can recall.

jamesteroh

Being a Delta PM, I wish Delta would have done the partnership with Hilton instead. One good think with the partnership is I can get a guaranteed 4 p.m. check out even with no SPG status (something I don't have as a HH diamond yet I get it with no SPG status go figure) and free wifi and it will give me a good chance to try SPG out.

Everytime I call the Platinum desk at Delta about a reservation I am asked if they can assit me with a rental car or hotel, I wonder if they try to get the people that say yes to book with an SPG hotel.

I am surprised rental car companies aren't partnering with airlines and hotels.

A couple years ago Hilton had a great promo with budget. It was either 5K or 7,500 hilton points with a car rental using a code. Budget got two car rentals from me during that time period that would have probably gone to alamo instead.

iqbalt80

Quick question for the gurus..
Does this also changes the Cash + Points Redemption?

I may have enough points to do some C+P redemption before the deadline rather than saving insane amount of points for later on.

For Example: Conrad Bali for Dec is 17000 pts + $69 or 29000 pts (reward night)
after march 28, it will be 60000 pts per night.

YorkieFlyer

C&P is a good deal now anyhow at $5.75 per k for the $69 substitution for 12k points. It's less than $10 per 1K points which is the buy points price for >10k. A caution is that there is likely taxes on the $69.

mnscout

Ahhh... Fixed "inspirational", thanks. It was late and I was eager to finish writing and go to bed. Too eager, perhaps. As to the program itself, I'm not a Hilton fanboy (there is no single program of which I am a fanboy), but to me, HHonors will remain my best go-getter for that free room for the time being. Now if they begin turning the screws in terms of CC bonus galore, then I'll join you guys on the barricades.

mnscout

Jerry, thank YOU for an excellent job. It's a breeze sorting through the categories and seeing what's what whereas with the original Hilton PDF file it's like pulling teeth.

Catch23

I second that - great job!

san888

I just get the feeling people just don't care. Hilton is just a greedy corporation who has violated its most loyal patrons.

san888

I suggested that they compensate loyal members and all I got back were their T&C's, their customer service really SUCKS!!!

Ritz

How exactly would you suggest they "compensate loyal members"? Undo the announced program changes? Deposit an incredible amount of points unilaterally in top elite accounts? Cut the redemption ratio requirements for top elites?

jamesteroh

There are a couple ways I can think of.

1 is to offer reduced redemption rates to diamonds. If it's a property that requires 50K points a year drop it by 10 to 20 percent to 40K or 45K for diamonds.

Another thing is to offer a free night certificate like they did in 2009. IIRC when hilton had the last deval they gave all diamond members a free night certificate.

Due to this huge deval, it would be nice if they offered additional benefits to diamonds to make up for it such a guaranteed 4 p.m. check out or a full breakfast. If they added some extra benefits that would help to make up for the deval and would be helping their most loyal guests.

blackjack-21

No, they won't compensate us by giving any free points or undoing their changes to redemptions. But if enough of us, and others not on FT who also realize the terrible deletion of their points, suddenly start redeeming in large enough numbers before March 28th, it may work both ways for Hilton .

1. The massive use of HHonors points for bookings will take the points off their books, and remove them as showing as a liability on their books, at least when they are actually used.

BUT:

2. Hilton has to pay a fee to each hotel property for reward rooms bookings, and although it's probably no where even close to what a paid room booking may be, still that would seem to be quite a bit of $$$ if so many reward room/nights are booked from now until early 2014 to try and beat the changes.

So either way Hilton will feel the change, but whether or not they react in any beneficial way to their HHonors members remains to be seen.

I'm no accountant or expert on the above, so I may be wrong and stand to be corrected, but just my thoughts for now.

Hilton probably expected some moans and outrage when the changes were announced, so that won't change anything. Using up your HHonors points then booking with other hotel groups would make a difference if done in large enough numbers of members, but that too remains to be seen as for all the moans and groans (mine too!), how many will actually be leaving Hilton?

bj-21.