jamesteroh

I am reading the rules as 100K redemption on the stay not per night. if it's redemption and more than one night, very easy to have the redemption over 100K points and absurd a LTD would get trumped on the upgrade.

That's why I wish they would go with Hyatt's suite upgrade system. Give out suite uupgrade certs after 50 nights in a year. You can use the suite upgrades on a stay where it is important and don't have to play the waiting game since the suite upgrade is applied when you upgrade. Another night thing is you can use them on points stays (just not the free night vouchers from their credit cards). And if someone qualifies for diamond on points, nights or stays give out two suite upgrade certs a year like Hyatt does for their globalist.

I think Hyatt's system is a lot fairer than Hilton's It's a lot like the airlines system, you get upgrade certs for the upgrades you really want and can play the waiting game on the ones that aren't imporant.

People would probably be willing to go out of their way to stay at Hilton's if they were close to getting another certificate. I have with Hyatt and have given Hyatt stays over Hilon before just because I knew it would get me another suite upgrade cert or I knew I could use the suite upgrade certificate and didn't have to play the waiting game with Hilton

madipides

Just a quick data point. I'm Hilton Diamond, based on nights and have 95 nights on my counter right now (including rollovers from last year). I stayed at the Hilton Blue Lagoon (Miami Airport) last week. I booked it 3 days in advance - Friday for a Monday one night stay using my corporate rate, for a business meeting. About 3 hours after I booked it I got the email "You've been upgraded" and they had lots of notifications on the Hilton App, such as under where it says "my stay" on the App it had a note saying "complimentary upgrade". When I clicked on "my stay" it had a line through one king bed and showed one bedroom suite with a 0.00 upgrade charge. There were lots of other features really broadcasting the suite upgrade, which was nice. So I suppose that hotel is one of the test markets... and that hotel is always friendly with upgrades as about half the rooms are larger than standard. I had never been upgraded into their corner suite before this trip.

troyintn

I doubt that, I see some of my upgrades at Marriott at 5 days out using a certificate, and 2 days using on line check-in, but rarely do I change if I am not upgraded.

premier01

I wonder whether if you had checked in on the app after the first upgrade whether you would have been further upgraded.

I do think checking in on the app is more likely to mean no further upgrades.

hugolover

As usual the credit card salesman talk tosh.

Automatic upgrades will work as follows:

Only runs if the hotels occupancy is less than 90%.
Takes 50% of remaining upgraded rooms.
Allocates cascading inventory according to LT, D and G, in that order.
Will not take the last room of each inventory. Therefore, Presidential, and any rooms of which there are just one of each kind will not be automatically allocated.
Villas, multi-room suites are excluded

For LT and many Diamond, it will be a benefit, but there might still be a need to fight for a suite for regular Diamonds. Gold's will clean up what's left, just like they do now.
It will mean in many smaller hotels not much will change. Don’t forget the exclusion for 90% occupancy

Hotels cannot opt-out. Note the regular T&C's of the programme that would exclude special types from upgrade anyway, even when booking the category below.

The thing about 100k is bizarre. I wonder if "LoyaltyLobby's" source was fed rubbish to catch a rat?

Baze

Interesting to read how people are getting upgrade 3 days in advance when this program doesn't even start until Nov 15th.

And the FlyerTalk Hilton Ambassador has already posted in the other thread that Loyalty Lobby and any other site touting that redemptions get priority are wrong and they have been contacted to correct their statements.

fereke

It starts globally on Nov 15th but has been rolled out at some hotels earlier, Barcelona or Amsterdam in my case.

hhdl

90% is the key threshold for making points stays track RevPAR vs. "token amount". That upgrades won't run over that threshold tells me that it's being treated like a points and money booking. It also suggests to me that properties may not be really able to prevent HLT from handing out upgrades.

If upgrades are limited to one level, then I guess it's possible that a different process may sometimes move people on premium room rewards (especially over 100k) up a level in order to make room for an extra upgrade.

troyintn

What will be the Tiebreaker between LT, room rate, length of stay etc? Since whenever travel comes back I can see this being like Marriott where UPGs are hit and miss at best.

troyintn

I tend to agree as I see little use for the App, I can use it as my key but I still have to see the front desk to confirm my room has not changed even when I have checked in online, and most of the time I want to figure out what room I want when I see the physical layout of the hotel. Yes if I have stayed there before that piece may not be relevant.

hugolover

It will be the internal value metric that has been ranking guests for years and years.

hhdl

I suspect that the Aspire and Surpass are driving this, likely due to the number of cards issued to people who weren't in hotels 30 nights a year and also stay almost exclusively in NA. The most common reason given for Aspire/Surpass non-renewal likely has been "In my half-dozen stays this year, I haven't got the upgrades I expected", so Amex (which now drives HLT's thought process almost as much as it drives DAL's) has perhaps made it clear that they want Aspire Diamonds to get upgrades.

If that's the motivation, I also think we might see these upgrades come to properties with premium rooms (that aren't ADA rooms...) in brands which haven't offered upgrades (e.g. HIS and HGI).

jamesteroh

It doesn't drive DAL's for top tier. DAL is devaluing GUC's and requires $250K in spend to be a credit card diamond. And upgrades with DAL are based on fare class. A full Y diamond is first in line for an upgrade and someone an awards ticket is last in line for the upgrade and I don't even think silvers on an award ticket can get upgraded.

It's absurd that a credit card diamond gets upgraded over an earned diamond.

I don't know why they just don't give out suite certificates after every 50th night. That way people spending nights in their hotels are getting rewarded and can get a guarantee upgrade on booking when they book the room.

escape4

One weakness of Hilton's loyalty program at the moment, is that it's too easy to get top tier relative to other hotel chains (because of Amex) so having top tier is less valuable comparatively speaking. Marriott's 100 nights + $20k USD spend is a high hurdle, and Hyatt's 60 nights is also not that easy considering the smaller footprint than Hilton. Some progress can be achieved with both Marriott and Hyatt via credit cards who give night credits but not to the same extent as Hilton.

Now that Hilton makes a distinction for upgrades between LTD and Diamond, there will be a definite advantage to people who stayed in Hiltons a lot and have reached Diamond organically, which was a fair complaint in the past. At least in theory, it can help narrow the gap with Marriott in terms of how many other guests are competing for suites. Hyatt is somewhat less comparable to Hilton but LT Globalists are sometimes also treated better than Globalists so Hilton's move will help in that regard too.

Another problem with Hilton in the past (at least based on my travel pattern), has been suite upgrades were less likely than Marriott and Hyatt in many cities because more Hilton hotels decided suites were out of bounds for upgrades, whereas with many Hyatt hotels I knew my odds are very close to 100% to get a suite, if a suite was available. I agree with others that this upgrade system won't magically make stingy Hilton hotels become generous overnight, however it might help give guests more ammunition to push back on the lack of upgrades when suites are available, maybe not in all hotels, but in some. Having a more tangible system for suite upgrades can also help improve the likelihood of upgrades in the long-term as some hotels might loosen up their views regarding upgrades modestly over time. Changing mindsets can be a gradual process and a new automated upgrade system can help in that regard.

So overall I think it's a positive. We'll see how the implementation goes.

escape4

For people who want to stay in one particular hotel no matter what, then it will be inconsequential. However at times I double-book across chains and cancel one of them at the last minute to maximize my odds of suite upgrade. I see this new Hilton feature as a plus, if Hilton gives me a suite I will keep it and cancel my other reservation, if Hilton does not upgrade then I cancel and will stay at the other hotel.