Modifying an existing reservation on points
 

If I currently have a reservation for 12/16-12/21 and want to modify it to 12/17-12/22...is that not possible. This reservation is made on points and there are plenty of the same room types available on 12/22 but they said they can't do it. Do I have any options. Thank you.

Just wonder how can an reservation still in active due to 2021 alrealy gone.

I assume the OP is American and using the MM/DD format, unlike the rest of the world which uses the DD/MM format. :p

Rebook new dates then cancel original booking (if you have enough points).

Otherwise, cancel then immediately rebook once you have received the points refund (usually instantaneous).

They want to just shift reservation by one day at start and end. No years are listed in the post.

If you really don't want to rebook, then you might to call. Certainly there are some things (like making a reservation with a free night certificate) which can only over the phone at Hilton (even though it can be done online in many other programs), so maybe a phone agent can do this even though you can't do it online. You can't tell unless you try.

I read this thread I did modify a points reservation online a few months ago, but in my case I wasn't changing the dates, the number of points required had fallen, and I was adjusting the reservation to get the new lower rate. And it did refund me the difference in points.

I think this is just a cancel and rebook. I also tried to modify an award reservation as the points rate had dropped. It wouldn't let me do it because I didn't have enough points.

Normally I would make the new reservation first and then cancel the old one just in case the points don't get refunded immediately. But as mentioned didn't have enough points to do it that way, so I had to try modifying it and when that didn't work, I had to risk cancelling it first.

Well, maybe it works differently for people who don't have enough points.

IIRC, I changed the room type and it took the new lower rate. Then later I changed the room type back to the original room type, and it held the new lower rate. But in my case, I have many hundreds of thousands of points, and this was a change from 31000 to 29000 for a one-night stay, where it refunded me 2000 points after I made the change.

Yes, that's what I was trying to say, it only worked that way because you had at least 29k points in your account.

If your account had less than 29k points, I believe you would have had to get the 31k refunded before it would let you rebook. That is to say, the system wants to determine that you can make the new booking outright, before it processes the change. Even though you shouldn't need to have any points at all, since the net position to you was a refund of 2000.

Reading the OP again, it sounds like there was no more points availability left for some of the original dates (17-21 Dec). The OP was already holding a points room for those dates, and there was availability on the new desired date of 22 Dec, so theoretically it should be possible to modify the reservation.

But like with not having enough points to make a fresh booking when the rate has dropped, in the OP's case the system could not make a fresh booking for the new dates, thus the modification request was rejected.

As it's unknown whether points availability will return if the existing reservation is cancelled, it's risky to do so, but if the OP can't arrive on 16 Dec they will have to try it. They could also book the 22nd as a separate booking and beg the hotel to allow check-in for the first reservation on the 17th - but that removes the 5th night free benefit.

The most likely problem is that one of the nights the OP had an award booked is not available on points (or at all). As other said the system tries to make a completely new reservation.

I've seen it recently myself when trying to change a rate on reservation with a room type that the hotel had only couple of rooms. Despite holding the room myself, all the others were sold so the new price did not show on the modify page.