Four hotels are going up in maximum award price, which since they no longer have award charts we wouldn’t know unless we:

• Noticed the new higher price, and
  
• Knew what the old lower price was to compare

Here are the four changes. Hilton Honors Vice President Aaron Glick emails,

Just as a quick heads up, on July 7th we’re making minor adjustments to standard awards at four hotels – given some changes in their markets.

With continued rapid growth in China, DoubleTree Hangzhou East’s top price will move from 10K to 20K Points, DoubleTree Jiaxing from 5K to 10K Points, and DoubleTree Wuhu from 5K to 10K Points. Also, with a major renovation now complete at Hampton Inn Universal Orlando, their top price will move from 20K to 30K Points. As a reminder, those Points prices are the most a member would pay. Points prices can still be lower when the hotel’s paid rate goes down.

He emphasizes that “these [are the] first changes since we introduced the new Points & Money in March” and suggests that “they give you a sense of the future adjustments we’ll consider” essentially they appear to be changing the award category of each hotel, even though they no longer publish award categories.

When Hilton introduced their new pricing method — points and money — the prices of some hotels go down, none go up compared to their earlier standard award prices.

Conrad New York

They’ve eliminated the best value capacity controlled cash and points awards, now all awards are cash and points at a member’s discretion but the value isn’t ‘better’. Improved value comes from some hotels having lower points prices than before. But Hilton doesn’t publish the maximum price for each hotel, and clearly can change the maximum price at will.

Here’s the old award chart:

Cash and points fixed prices are gone. But hotels are supposed to charge at most what they charged in their previous category — unless Hilton changes a hotel’s category, as they explain they’re in effect doing at four properties.

All of the specific changes they’re making seem on-face reasonable, but I replied asking if they would “reconsider posting a standard award “maximum price” chart” since that would foster the kind of transparency they appear to be seeking in sharing changes like this.

Glick counters that they let you look up each hotel and see the property’s previous redemption category along with the minimum and maximum redemption price.

However they no longer update the page they created as part of a commitment to transparency showing the hotels which were going up and down in category.

While we know what category a hotel used to belong to, as they increasingly shift the maximum points prices of a property they’ll be more and more unanchored to the original chart. And unless they email me every time they make a change, I’m not sure how we’ll know other than through happenstance.