Tricky deval From Some Hilton Properties
 

I just noticed that the hotel we stay at no longer offers "standard" room awards and is charging up 85K points per night for a standard room in a cat 7. During this prime season rooms should be available for 60K

This only concerns me because if the AXON7 is no longer valid we will be finding a new vacation spot. I won't have the 190K to book an Axon 7 until mid July so until then I won't know for sure.

Doubletree North Redington Beach, hotel is nothing special, location and staff are awesome.

Is this an isolated incident or are other Hilton family hotels playing this game ?

I also noticed they are not honoring 5th night free

I booked 5 nights in November 2014 on 3/14/2014 for 160k, today , 2 months later same room type, same dates, 236,595 points

This DT not playing by the rules
 

Not sure if this is news or not ( it is to me) but I noticed some Hilton Family Hotels are not playing by the Hilton Rules and are marking ALL rooms as premium.

I am seeing a cat 7 charging 90K for any room and not giving 5th night free.

The Hotel I am speaking of is the Doubletree North Redington Beach but doing search of other hotels in Florida I came across a few claiming to only have Premium rooms available and this appears to be not only in peak season but year round.

I'm guessing AXON 7 will not be honored either but won't know for sure until I get 190K points next month

The latest stealth deval or have others heard of this ?

I know at the Doubletree this is new as I booked 5 nights for November 2014 on March 14, 2014 for 160k, 2 months later those same 5 nights are 236,595 points

Moved from CCP forum since this is not about Hh credit cards.

Add some slippers and a robe and you have a deluxe room. I have noticed this also. When I see that no "Standard" rooms are open way out from check in date I call the hotel about it and also email the Diamond desk. I was told by a resort hotel in Europe "we only have 5 standard rooms at our hotel"

It is tricky..

It would appear one could have an accessible room at the property you mentioned with a standard room reward. (Don't shoot the messenger.) I do find it curious and disappointing, but nsurprising that some of the inland view rooms aren't available to book with points at all when one can get an accessible room with points.

But really, this is hardly a new phenomenon, there are posts of it happening as far back as 2011.

And these rooms get the fifth night free.

Select "show accessible rooms".... If you don't need accessible, put it in the comments and/or just call the hotel after booking and they will likely just change it for you to a regular room.

DT North Redington Beach has rooms next week for 40K points, the week after I can find a 5 day stay for 32K points a night (5th night free). Not sure the dates you are searching. If it's really full, peak time or a holiday it's going to be tougher to book.

I see rooms available at the regular rates too. I don't believe this is one of the occasions when the hotel has not made any rooms available at the normal rates. The non-premium rooms may just be sold out for the OP's dates.

You are about 2.5 years late here - a search for
premium room scam
will give you more than enough reading material on this...
(and btw hilton had a couple major devals since then already - we are probably due for another one...)

Don't just go by what the reward says, actually go in and pick the dates and see what reward rate you get. You may find a few weeks here and there but most dates are over the 40k off season max and 60k in season max

Sold out for mid April 2015, highly unlikely


Put in the dates 11/28 - 12/3 ad you will not see any 40K rooms ( the max rate at that time of year) and they are also not honoring 5th night free

I booked 11/28 - 12/3 two months ago for 160K, today same room and dates 236,595 points

I did find that by calling the Diamond Desk AXON 7 are still available for 190K/4 nights

I see that works, I'm guessing they might ask why I booked it though, lol

You didn't specify a date when you initially posted.
Look at May 1 -12, 2015 there is an 2Q accessible room available for 40,000.
I just searched 11/28 - 12/2 and there is a 2Q accessible room available for 40,000 per nite.
Hotel won't care if you book the accessible room (and in some cases the FD when I check in understands why I booked as it was the lowest cost room in points). Just let them know either ahead of time or even when you arrive that you don't need the accessible room and they may (usually will, in my experience, move you to another nonaccessible room).

One of the OP's five nights calls for a Premium room award. That really isn't surprising at Florida resort area over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Breaking up the 5-night stay disallows the 5-for-4 discount but may be cheaper than a Premium award for the entire 5-night stay.

http://i1154.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2415d128.png

Notice how it says from 40,000 points, those are the handicapped rooms. Even the inland view rooms are much more.

You did find one day that for some reason is much cheaper at 36k points so there are off season exceptions

Those handicap rooms seem to be the only standard rooms and since this is a privately owned property I'm guessing it's a Hilton rule for even non corporate properties to offer handicapped at standard rates either that or the owner missed it ...............for now

This hotel is privately owned and they want to play games so let them, nobody is paying 114k points for one night here oceanfront in March

No big deal we love the area but if we can't book 8 nights here for 360K via AXON we'll just move down to the Hilton Clearwater rather than pay the 680,000 plus points they want for the cheapest non handicapped room 4/11 - 4/18

Since I stay at this hotel every year I know this is new policy, inland rooms were always standard awards.

Just to see if it was possible all the standard rooms were actually spoken for I put in May 19 ( the farthest date out you can book) for one night, cheapest ( non handicapped) inland view room is 152,640 points per night , lol


BTW, what program and browser are you using to post screenshots, snipit on Mozilla doesn't seem to work

The problem of what a chain and property considers a 'standard' room isn't confined to Hilton. Check the Starwood forum for similar complaints, and recognize that Starwood doesn't even display premium room awards online. As Azepine remarked, the monetization of premium room inventory has been going on a couple of years with HHonors. (As a Diamond I do pretty well with room upgrades even on awards so I book standard and hope for the best most times.)

I post pictures via the image hosting service Photobucket on a tip given from a FlyerTalk user some years ago. It's more involved than cut-and-paste from a browser but screen images can be very helpful to explain certain points when so much of what we're doing booking travel is browser-based.

In Chrome, alt-print screen to capture the active browser window

Open Windows paint to edit

Paste image into Paint

Crop account details and distractions and generally tighten an image so it doesn't dominate the FlyerTalk pane.

Save image

Open Photobucket

Drag to upload

Click image to select

Copy the image tag (the last of the four options at right)

Paste the Photbucket image tag into FlyerTalk