brandonpkt

pinniped

I just booked my 5-nighter at WA.

Now I have to wait 35 days to see if I can actually get a flight there.

retiredfromhilton

Correct. Since hotels can now set any price in points, and any inventory of 'standard rooms' as they see fit, there is no need - in fact no way - for Honors to make a system-wide change.

brandonpkt

Beano

I was not around (member) in 2013 but I keep hearing the big 2013 devaluation .
how bad was it ?

brandonpkt

pinniped

I've forgotten how many structural devaluations this program has had. It feels like it foundationally changes every couple of years. 2013 and 2017 are fresher in my mind, but going back farther than that both Gold and Diamond actually meant something in terms of on-property treatment and upgrades. And you had things like the Hawaii ALON awards and the GLON awards for other top properties (6 night stays). You had AXON for 4 night stays.

Some of the devaluations are mildly tempered by 5th Night Free and the fact that we now earn 50-60 points/$ on most stays counting the "typical" promotions.

But this has long been Hilton's story: flood the world with points and then be forced to overhaul because of points-inflation. Marriott and Starwood, by contrast, have had very stable earning and redemption structures for basically the past 15 years until their train wreck of an attempted merger. They had the same annual category creep that HH does but they hardly ever had to completely nerf the program. Hilton does that every 3-4 years.

Super Mario

The reality that most people on this site refuse to accept is that these programs are moving with the economy. People think they can identify a time when a company set fire to its own business model, and know what is better off for for that very company. The truth is, travel as a whole is doing very, very well right now. These companies have no incentive to give away the farm. No one is entitled to staying in $1000 a night rooms for pennies on the dollar.

pauleeepaul

You heretic

pinniped

I think it's more complex then boom and bust markets. The programs didn't get much better during the recession in 2008, although it's possible that upgrades were easier to come by. The programs did not reset their rules back to some earlier time.

I believe it's more to do with the fact that in the early years of FFPs, there was great information arbitrage. I could be on a TWA 747 with 300 people aboard and a large number of them did not know what a frequent flier mile was. They bought a ticket from a travel agent, took their flight, and that was it. Someone who knew about the program and knew how to work the sweet spots back then was being subsidized by a huge number of people who were effectively paying for miles (bundled into their ticket) but either not getting them or getting them and having no idea how to best use them.

Same held true for the hotel programs. I remember getting upgrades simply because I was the only Marriott Marquis guest in the building. I didn't have status...maybe did 10 stays a year with Marriott...but I was the rare person who cared about the hotel points. Most guests got nothing...or, by then, were aware of airline programs and handed over an Aviator or AAdvantage card at the front desk to get their 500 miles.

Now pretty much everybody is at least aware. Flyertalkers may be nerdier than most about maximizing value, but even my parents in their 70s know how to use miles and points *reasonably* well - at least know enough to not burn them on MCI-ORD and a one-night stay at a Hampton Inn. There's still some breakage out there, but it's not 90% of all possible earned miles/points like it probably was 30 years ago for airlines and 20 years ago for hotels.

Because of that, the programs have no choice but to water down. I'd imagine from their perspective, they're issuing more total award seats and award rooms than ever. It's just that many more of us are trying to get them so the programs can make them a bit harder to get.

Cledaybuck

All that may be true, but isn't the simpler explanation that hotels prices have gone up, so hotels giving out more points. Stands to reason hotels will cost more points to redeem then. Of course, Hilton's dynamic pricing system naturally does this, to some extent.

Beano

has anyone done a calculation over say 10+years the % of the points vs the cash cost (including taxes)
eg 5,000 points earn on 1 evening .That hotel cost say $100 (including taxes)
​Requires 30,000 points to stay in
to see if the % or ratio has changed ?

pinniped

But that doesn't explain HH's decade-plus of structural instability. They've had multiple wholesale program reboots whereas Marriott and Starwood have not. (Before their merger, anyway.)

In inflationary markets, they handle with the regular annual category creep. All of the programs do that.

Hilton has had challenges keeping their basic program construct intact for more than about 3 years at a stretch.

brandonpkt

xyc

Some time in the last few days, without warning or notice, Hilton raised the maximum points price of many hotel rooms by 10,000 points per night. After examining prices in several cities, I have concluded that this is the biggest overall devaluation since Hilton introduced dynamic pricing in early 2017. There is a new maximum price of 90,000 points for some hotel rooms that used to be 80,000, and Hilton also reduced the value of points towards standard rooms that cost less than the hotel maximum points by about 5% nearly across the board for the third time since introducing dynamic pricing. I am sick of this behavior. Marriott has mistreated its customers in many ways since October, but at least it gives warning to its customers before decreasing the stored value of their rewards by 5 to 20% overnight.

It was easy to foresee these actions by Hilton as soon as HonorsRepresentative posted on FlyerTalk in June 2017 that points pricing changes would no longer be announced in advance or at all. Hilton has given itself and repeatedly exercised the right to slash the value of points without warning, and its rewards program is no longer one to be trusted. Of course there is nothing we can do to stop Hilton from doing whatever it wants, but I hope that more people realize what is going on and that thinking of Hilton gives people negative feelings as it has for me for more than a year. While I continue to monitor points pricing, I voted with my feet many months ago, spent nearly all of my points, cut my Hilton stays to less than a fourth of my previous volume, and wrote Hilton to tell them why.

As you well know, Hilton probably could not care less about me, but I write here to inform people of how Hilton is treating its customers, so perhaps more people will understand the extent to which Hilton can and will screw over its customers without warning or even notice at any time, and hopefully this understanding will lead to Hilton increasingly being properly regarded as an untrustworthy company. I wish you all success in getting the best values that you can.