GordonGordon

Last year I had total 78 qualifying nights and 120,000+ base points. By the end of this year I will ONLY make total 41 nights (32 paid nights + 9 award nights)and 41,000+ base points because of point devaluation. I moved part of my stays to IHG and priceline.

I just wanna show Hilton Hhonors that I'm pissed and I can do the same thing to them if I'm not treated well. I hope everyone is doing the same so that Hilton will finally get our message. I "devalued" the cash I spent on Hilton Group roughly around 65% ^^

wizla

Hmmmm i'm actually the opposite, i've been silver for around 7 years with a few leisure stays here and there.........last year i just scraped through to gold around xmas.........i then discovered how great free breakfast, wifi and good upgrade chances are that i toured a lot this year ( in fact it's become a new hobby!) and will qualify for diamond on the 28th dec with 32 stays.

Cymro

Shouldn't you make it 2 stays before then?

Or will your 30th stay end on 28 December and go through the end of the year with 2 more stays?

I'm on 19 stays and working out where to place that 20th but as I have 25 nights booked in the first 2 months of 2014, I'll probably end up diamond next year.

helosc

I will have 41 nights this year - enough to maintain my gold.
Of those 41 nights, 7 nights were award nights ( 60.000 points in all ).
I am very pleased with the benefits I receive as gold and I am also very pleased with the standard of the hotels I am visiting.
To me the points is an added benefit ( a very welcome one...), but not the main benefit.

wizla

ha, im wrong on both counts...my 30th stay is 27th dec @canary wharf and 31st stay @ park lane......the other stay is a "3rd party booking"......sorry i miscounted!.

pryonic

I'm doing a couple of mattress runs using points to maintain Diamond - annoyingly I wouldn't have needed to if they hadn't upped number of stays from 28 to 30!

I'm working on a large project and this is based in my employer's Birmingham office, meaning I travel down usually once a week to catch up with the team. While there are plenty of hotels near by (Crown Plaza, and the local Arden non-affiliated hotel), the Hilton Birmingham Metropole meets my needs the best:

- Good gym (the other two hotels are terrible)
- Pool
- Executive Lounge which I make good use of
- Plenty of rooms
- Walkable from the office

Even with the recent devaluations and drop in quality of the Birmingham Metropole (especially in the exec lounge, less choice and shorter hours) the Hilton is still the best choice for my stays. As such I'm making the effort to regain Diamond - and those two mattress runs to Liverpool and Newcastle I can visit family. Not so much mattress runs as an excuse for weekend away!

If I travelled to more varied locations I'd probably dump Hilton, but it's not really a choice I have at the moment.

gnarly

I wonder if it is a US centric thing to feel the devalulation of the program(me).

I'm also UK/Europe based and have greatly increased my Hilton spend from 4 nights last year (albeit with a comp'd Gold) to 30 stays this year.
I'm exactly the same as Wizla, wifi and brekky have made Hilton a chain of choice.

The prices are identical to IHG for where I need to be, but the properties are much nicer.

I think people in the US have the option of complaining about the devaluation as each two pony town will have a Marriott, a Hyatt, a Holiday Inn, something from SPG, Wyndham, Choice etc.

Over here we have Accor, IHG and Hilton.

poser

I think a lot of has to do with location and what people feel comfortable paying. I have a weekend stay in San Diego coming up and with Hilton I have a rate of $75 for a FS Hilton (even if its a little rundown). IHG has some really cheap Holiday Inns but they are in less than desirable areas. SPG has some $89 rates if you prepay but the cheapest non-prepaid rate is $99 + $17 a day parking for a former Holiday Inn Express. Marritott for $93 for a CY in a business park is the cheapest rate I found with them. So it makes sense for me to stay with Hilton.


It appears that so many people focus on the amount of points required for a stay and forgot how easy it is to obtain points. I have no expense report to fill out and I get 10-30k points a month with my Hilton credit card. And from what I have seen other programs are a lot harder to obtain points.


Lets go back to San Diego for an example... You can get a good from Hilton for 50k points per night and an equivalent room with Marriott for say 30k points a night more. Those 20k points a night are not that hard to obtain.

JohnnyColombia

True this, Having been an SPG person I was amazed to see so many Hiltons in the UK in backwaters such as Exeter and Derby (places with just the one pony) Plus there are some great value nights in Brum for £26 and 5000 HHonors for a stay at the DoubleTree Newcastle Airport. It would be handy if someone could put a Hilton at the south end of the Humber Bridge or thereabouts.

It is certainly not a catchall brand though for a Brit that travels around. I am not going to spank $390 per night on the Conrad Hong Kong when there are some brilliant small chain hotels for half that. There is NOTHING in Manila (yet) either.

helosc

In my experience Marriott cost more than Hilton in Europe, not least because Hilton has some very good deals on weekends and in summer when they are missing their business clientele.
As far as location - neither Hilton nor Marriott is around every corner in my part of the world so I cannot always use either of them on my travels. If there is a Hilton where I am going, I am definitely staying there.

travelexpert

I have been Diamond every year for almost 20 years.

My loyalty came to a screeching halt in February this year, just as I had found a fantastic Homewood Suites at the Convention Center for an extended stay, and had staked out a perfect one bedroom suite.

I checked out and moved to the nearby SpringHill Suites.

So with 39 nights in 2013, I will not (because of another aspect of the SUPER-MEGA-UBER-devaluation) even make it to Gold.

So I acquired a Milepoint membership thinking that will be my ticket to Gold as I use up my 1 million remaining points.

And then my Amex Hilton Surpass card just announced Gold for cardholders.

Bottom line: I am now MR all the way. I tried Club Carlson as secondary--but am not especially impressed. Will have HY and SW as my secondary.

Adios Hilton. There are consequences to being over-greedy.

hginPHL

I made Diamond about a month ago - and will end the year with 67 nights.

This is significantly down from past years as I have moved most of my business to MR. I just made Platinum with them last week for the very first time - in the past, I had barely made Gold - and hadn't done so in several years.

I have two more Hilton stays left for the year, mostly because of the current promotion, and also because I will have maxed out the MR Megabonus by then.

With that said, and while I like MR, the grass isn't necessarily all that much greener IMO.

IcHot

I don't see any reason to put loyalty first over finances. My argument is that the points aren't worth accumulating with any vigor, which you sort of confirm with your second point.

If you can get a Hilton for $75, why earn 50,000 pts and spend them there?
Use another credit card and take the cash rebate and pay cash for the room.

If you like Hilton, use them. I don't see why it needs to be rationalized by the loyalty program.

It reminds me a bit of the discussion about hybrid cars. One person will argue that a Chevy Volt doesn't make sense. Which car makes sense? The one you like. I might think a $55,000 Cadillac is a total waste, while another fellow may think the Volt is a waste. To each his own.

hhoope01

I tend to agree with this. I made Diamond for the first time ever this year. And mostly it was because where I was traveling. I had a choice between a Courtyard, an HGI, or an Embassy Suites. Even though I am a LT Plat with Marriott, I wanted to try out the HGI and Embassy Suites. Given I like those two hotels over the CY, I will probably send most of my stays to those next year as well.

I tend to like the Hilton non-FS hotels over the Marriott non-FS, but prefer Marriott FS over Hilton's. So as long as I'm traveling to an area where I'm staying at non-FS, I'm probalby sticking more with Hilton.

BTW, I really don't like the non-FS Starwood hotels (Alofts, 4-Pts, etc.) and Starwoods movement toward communal toletries. The IHG program has gone through a similar level of devaulation as Hilton (i.e. hotels that were 15K points a few years ago are 50K points now) and has very sparse elite benefits. So the choice of hotel for me goes beyond earning/burning points for a program.

azepine00

zero paid nights

if other chains are not reasonable i use priceline - not like hilton offers anything beyond that in benefits anyways...