Changing cash booking to points
 

Hopefully this hasn't been asked before - I wasn't able to find any threads on it.

If I reserve a Hilton room now, paying cash, but then later decide I'd like to pay with points - can I simply cancel my initial reservation and make a new one? Of course, if there is already room availability, this is a non-issue. I am more interested in knowing whether or not a cancelled reservation at a fully booked hotel is then available to book with points? It makes logical sense that it would be, but I don't know if there are rules behind the scenes regarding how many award rooms are allocated at any given time or something like that. Maybe someone on here has some inside info. Thanks!

It is really a crap shoot in this scenario. Folks have seen their cancelled bookings immediately return to inventory and are able to re-book them on points. They've also seen their cancellations evaporate into thin air with the room NOT being moved back into inventory. This varies on a hotel-by-hotel basis. And of course, you'd probably want to have a base room secured that's equivalent to the standard redemption rate at the hotel, versus being held hostage for the premium room rewards rate later on. Best of luck.

Yes, I would be sure to book a base rate room in this scenario. That's a good point.

I suppose when a hotel is at capacity, they are much more inclined to attempt to sell any cancelled bookings rather than offering them up for points.

Gotta love the response from Hilton on this. I asked them the same question a few days ago - making it clear that I understood that you can't change the payment method of a given reservation...

" Thank you for your inquiry regarding reservation payment method modification. We appreciate you taking the time to contact us.


We would like to inform you that, we can not modify the reservation payment method once you have created a reservation. We will request you to please directly contact the hotel for this concern.

We appreciate your loyalty towards Hilton."

Super helpful!

I've just tried this on a booking for November, corporate rate, booked at $119 - now $148 before discount - and I can easily switch to 36k points per night. What isn't clear is whether they would offer you any chance to change the rate if the room type had sold out altogether.

Yeah, that's my concern. I feel like it's more likely that they wouldn't but I guess you never know.

My experience is that you can only do this if there is availability showing before you change your reservation as I tried to do it once when it was fully booked and they said they couldn't do it.

Thank you - this is some good information to have.