After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of nearly three years ago, there weren’t huge changes again this year.
Hilton decided to change the way they made changes to how they re-assign hotels to award categories. Instead of an annual change to tons of hotels (a schedule they really weren’t wedded to in the past anyway) they decided they would make rolling changes throughout the year. And instead of informing all members proactively of these changes, they would just post them on a web page in the name of ‘transparency’.
Conrad Bangkok
At least they are announcing the changes. And savvy members could create a change detection for the page.
Hilton HHonors is making category adjustments to several hotels effective January 13.
24 get go up in category and 11 go down Overall a sliver of the overall HHonors portfolio, however:
- When you make these changes several times a year it’s easy to make any given cohort of changes seem small. In four quarters of announcements we’ve seen 89 hotels go up in category and 32 go down (that’s 3-1 increases over decreases).
- Hilton doesn’t have to raise hotels a category to increase their price since they now have a range of prices within several categories. And there are no announcements when hotels get more expensive within a category thus we really can’t say whether there have been big increases or not.
Waldorf Hilton London
Here are the changes:
HOTELS WITH CATEGORY INCREASE |
||||||
Hotel Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Previous Reward Category |
New Reward Category |
Effective Date |
Hilton Vancouver Airport | Richmond | Canada | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 | |
DoubleTree by Hilton Xiamen – Wuyuan Bay | Xiamen | China | Category 2 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hilton Shenzhen Shekou | Shenzhen | China | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Doubletree By Hilton Jakarta – Diponegoro | Jakarta | Indonesia | Category 5 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 | |
DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel & Spa Napa Valley / American Canyon | American Canyon | CA | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn San Mateo | San Mateo | CA | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Rohnert Park | Rohnert Park | CA | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Orlando Airport @ Gateway Village | Orlando | FL | United States | Category 3 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Ft Myers Bch Sanibel Gtw | Ft Myers Beach | FL | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn Hinesville | Hinesville | GA | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn New Orleans / Convention Center / Downtown | New Orleans | LA | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Home2 Suites by Hilton D’lberville | Diberville | MS | United States | Category 3 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
DoubleTree by Hilton Greensboro | Greensboro | NC | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn Charlotte Airport | Charlotte | NC | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Greensboro Coliseum Area | Greensboro | NC | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
HAMPTON INN & SUITES PROVIDENCE DOWNTOWN | Providence | RI | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Providence | Providence | RI | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn Knoxville / University | Knoxville | TN | United States | Category 4 | Category 6 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Amarillo | Amarillo | TX | United States | Category 3 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
Home 2 Suites by Hilton Austin Cedar Park | Austin | TX | United States | Category 3 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
Embassy Suites Hotel Dallas / DFW Int’l Airport South | Irving | TX | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Port Aransas | Port Aransas | TX | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn North Austin | Austin | TX | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hilton Garden Inn South Padre Island | South Padre Island | TX | United States | Category 6 | Category 7 | 13-Jan-16 |
HOTELS WITH CATEGORY DECREASE |
||||||
Hotel Name |
City |
State |
Country |
Previous Reward Category |
New Reward Category |
Effective Date |
Hilton At Resorts World Bimini | North Bimini | Bahamas | Category 8 | Category 7 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hampton Inn & Suites Edmonton Intl AP Alberta | Leduc | Canada | Category 5 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hilton Garden Inn Edmonton Intl Airport | Leduc | Canada | Category 5 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hilton Taba Resort & Nelson Village | Cairo | Egypt | Category 3 | Category 1 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hilton Brighton Metropole | Brighton | United Kingdom | Category 6 | Category 5 | 13-Jan-16 | |
Hampton Inn San Francisco Downtown/Convention Center | San Francisco | CA | United States | Category 8 | Category 7 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn Yazoo City MS | Yazoo City | MS | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Cherry Hill | Voorhees | NJ | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn Voorhees | Voorhees | NJ | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | 13-Jan-16 |
Hampton Inn & Suites Philadelphia Montgomrvll | North Wales | PA | United States | Category 5 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
Homewood Suites by Hilton Lansdale PA | Lansdale | PA | United States | Category 5 | Category 4 | 13-Jan-16 |
Quite noteworthy that they’re announcing these an entire year too late.
Hahaha yes typo fixed. Can’t quite get into 2016 yet.
Doubletree By Hilton Jakarta – Diponegoro Jakarta Indonesia Category 5 Category 3
Shouldn’t this be in decrease… Great post!
@Adam it does look like Hilton put that one in the wrong category listing!
Breaking news – Hilton suites are easy to score in Asia (as they are with every single hotel chain)
Hilton is the “king of devaluation”. After “industry leading” massive/gutting of their award chart in 2013, it continues that trend now slowly but surely (hoping that we have a very short memory..like a frog who gets fried slowly and doesn’t jump)..hence it should be called “Hdishonors” (not Hhonors).
@ff_lover — What you say if I told you that “After “industry leading” massive/gutting of their award chart in 2013” Hilton awards now cost almost exactly the same as Hyatt’s or Marriott’s and that they are almost an order of magnitude cheaper that SPG’s?
Considering how vibrant the HHonors program has been since that “devaluation”, I would say that it was a brilliant move that made the program competitive again, after their awards became ridiculously cheap compared to the competition… really.
Bottom: Was the HHonors 2013 “devaluation” very drastic? Sure it was… but the fact that the top Hyatt awards now cost HGP 30K points and the top HH awards cost 95K HH points and that one earns 3.2 times more HH points a pop than one earns HGP points means that HH awards cost exactly the same as HGP’s (95K/3.2 = 29.6K = ~ 30K) AFTER the purported HH “devaluation”, whose effect was, therefore, to bring HH awards in line with their competitors’…
Got it now?
@DCS What you fail to acknowledge is that the Hilton program is just dishonest – publishing a “range” of rates, blacking out the lowest cost rooms, etc. I find all other programs generally offer award rooms at the lowest posted rates. So the higher “earn” at Hilton does not compensate for the higher award rates. Also SPG and Hyatt cards earn far more CC points which makes those programs a better play for people who earn points by CC spend rather than $$ spent on rooms.
Hilton works well for people who earn at low tier properties, i.e. HGI Bakersfield and spend at low tier properties. Those who stay in top hotels in major cities and want award stays at luxury resorts won’t be found here.
@DCS is partially right but below is where the counter-argument is:
1. I think Hilton top properties (95K regular) is not a match for SPG top properties (30K always). So, Hilton comes up short if we focus on the 95K vs. 30K argument. Because Radission will say I have got top properties at 75K w/ a CC earling rate of 5pts/$1. So, I come out ahead of SPG (20K vs. 30K) but Radission top properties are no match for SPG top properties.
2. The “huge” point range of top Hilton properties (95K-265+K) is bad. Hilton may say I am at least giving you the chance to book at premium date ..But SPG doesn’t have any blackout date with this respect. This allows Hilton properties to charge whatever they want at whatever date they feel.
3. The “run of the mill” workhorse/mid-range category of properties of SPG (~3K-10K) comes out ahead of Hilton’s (40K-60K) in terms of pts requirement.
Hilton or other Hotel chains doing good could be lot of reasons (overall economy got better, people are travelling more etc. etc.)..”Corelation doesn’t mean causation”..