I'm thoroughly confused about who this policy is supposed to be helping. In the past, any hotel that wanted to set a one-day cancellation policy was free to do so, and many did. Now Hilton is limiting a property's ability to react to the local market conditions with a more lenient cancellation policy. More restrictions can't be good for the hotel and don't seem to be good for the guests either, so what's the point?

This sucks for me. As someone who's made Diamond staying on my own dime while storm chasing, it will make justifying a Hilton property that much harder. Weather can change on a whim and I find myself changing which property I'm staying at a lot during storm chases. I've booked a room in Dodge City, KS and ended up at the North Platte, NE Hampton Inn before by the end of the night.

Not having cancellation flexibility pretty much means I need to go find another hotel chain. Hilton will not suffice for me, which is a shame because I do like staying in their properties.

It's an opportunistic revenue-maximization play with no regard for the lost lifetime value of alienated customers.

Not sure how it helps Hilton's revenue. If any property thought it would increase their own revenue to have an early cancellation policy, they were already free to do so. What does Hilton gain by making it mandatory?

They are thinking that by casting a wide net, they will a)get people to actually stay the hotel and pay rather than have those people hear "no rooms" and look elsewhere prior to cancellations, and b) "gotcha" on the people who don't cancel in time.

I'll let the Hilton's track record in various activities help others decide which one is the main motivator.

IMHO this means that Hilton will have to decrease the price of the Easy cancellation rates.

After all, we pay for the option of being able to cancel at the last moment if necessary and these rates are no longer very (practically) flexible.

Originally Posted by FlyinDutchman

IMHO this means that Hilton will have to decrease the price of the Easy cancellation rates.

Agreed. This new policy IMO makes the term, ‘Easy Cancellation’ for choice of a room rate option, farcical.

Hilton just became my "never book" hotel chain.... I'll stick with Marriott, thank you. What a terrible policy change.

I can certainly see why any individual hotel might want to require day-before cancellations, but can't see why Hilton would make this a chain-wide rule. It's not like setting a quality standard that would attract customers to the group or streamlining procedures in way that would help Hilton's back-end systems in any meaningful way. The only thing I can figure is that many hotels did want to make this change, but needed the cover of a corporate mandate to avoid a customer backlash.

Hilton is just following Marriott's lead. I do agree that it is a terrible change

You do realize Marriott has the exact same policy, like I posted upthread, right?

http://travelupdate.boardingarea.com...w-policy-says/

Umm...let us know how that works out for you. SMH.

It's interesting that Hilton can't herd its properties into line on anything that benefits the customer (quarterly promo compliance, breakfast / lounge policies, etc.) but has no trouble getting wall-to-wall compliance on something that hurts the customer.

Yes. I usually cancel a hotel for two reasons. One is far ahead of time, because my whole plan changed. The other is same day when flights have problems. This is an unfortunate change, penalizing the many of us who only rarely same-day cancel for the bad deeds of a few.

While I have no problems with hotels being able to select more restrictive cancellation policies than the standard (within reason and as long as they're notified), I'm surprised that there is no flexibility to allow same-day cancellation if the hotel feels it is right for market conditions.

It won't affect me much - I have travel insurance that would deal with airline delays but I do/did travel from time to time with my elderly father and if he's not well enough on the day the late cancellation would have been very helpful. Those kind of bookings are made on the basis that if we travel, it will be that day - but we've been happy to pay the higher, flexible rate.

Now though the balance of risk is weighted much more in favor of pre-paid where there is a substantial saving.