Leisure travel is back. So is travel that combines business and leisure, but not in the way travel brands used to think about it. The idea used to be, you’re taking a business trip and maybe you’d bring the family (or they’d meet you) and you’d extend the trip through the weekend.
Now, with many businesses still allowing flexibility on return to office, the model has flipped. You might take a weekend trip, and start early. Since many employees can ‘work from anywhere’ they take off on a Wednesday or Thursday, work a day or two from their vacation destination, and then stay longer. The vacation drives the trip that includes work, rather than the other way around.
Either way that still involves leisure, and the pure business trip isn’t back to anything like pre-pandemic levels. There’s conference attendance, to be sure, and there are meetings. But with many offices not back to earlier levels of occupancy, with many people continuing to work offsite especially in the largest cities and for the largest companies outside of financial services (and to some extent even there, too) the ‘Monday to Thursday’ consultant travel, working at a client site, just hasn’t returned.
You can tell this from Hilton’s new promotion: double points on all stays with checkouts by December 31 plus 2000 bonus points for checkouts on a weekday. (Registration required.)
- Double points is the Hilton base case. Hilton’s program is the least rewarding for basic on-property spend, and needs these consistent promotions to be competitive. At $0.004 per Honors point this is worth an additional 4% rebate on your eligible hotel spend.
- Bonusing weekday checkouts even more underscores that those checkouts remain scarce. Traditional business travel isn’t back.
In addition Hilton is offering double elite night credit for nights stayed October 11 – December 31, 2022. (Separate registration required.)
Hilton JFK
With Hilton Honors status there is no promise of suites (you might get one but denying an available suite as an upgrade is fine in this program), there is no guaranteed late check-out (again, you might get it, but hotels aren’t required to honor this) and the food and beverage credit that replaced breakfast often is too little to cover the cost of breakfast. So expanding the elite pool isn’t that hard for them.
And I’m more than happy with my Amex Platinum-derived Gold status, and would be equally happy with status from a Hilton co-brand card. I just see no reason to chase Hilton status through stays. But higher status is (marginally) better, and if this makes it easier to get there so much to the good. Plus both promotions include award stays, which is great.
Conrad Bora Bora
At the same time loyalty programs still need to hang onto elite business travelers whose business travel hasn’t fully returned. Southwest is running a promotion and so is Hyatt but for all-inclusives only. Marriott offered double credit on home rental bookings only. Ironically Delta announced elite status will become harder to earn but that’s next year and they can always offer promotions if they’re falling short.
Oh, here we go. I can’t wait for the usual suspect to chime in on this post and “correct” you on every point you made about Hilton
They need to fix their website. Even if I’m logged in, I have to login again for each registration and enter the two factor security code each time. Terrible implementation.
@TheJetsFan Exactly! I have to login, with a special code sent to my e-mail, each time. It takes a long time to get the code, and it’s annoying.
Is there really a problem with too many people registering for promo that Hilton had to come up with this extra step?
You got that right…another opportunity shoot me down some really big ducks! Please read the following carefully and you might learn something new (i.e., the truth) for a change, and it is free! This site’s latest attempt to yet again disparage what is a highly rewarding promotion is an angry scream for seeing a biased option of a program constantly mocked by that program with superior offerings and innovative programmatic changes that end up being widely adopted. In fact, as I will show some day, the values of all the other hotel points currencies are “pegged” to the value of the Hilton point, which is why their “face” values are “worth” exactly the same. Hotel loyalty points are a “currency peg”!
How rewarding this promotion is speaks for itself to anyone who knows the first thing about valuing loyalty programs’ offers. I will just debunk these demonstrably bogus and constantly recycled claims, yes, point-by every single bogus-point:
Here’s he goes again, repeating the very same old, discredited and made up “standards” of excellence, tailored to make his favored program(s)’ garden variety benefits seem like the very essence of nirvana.
Please update those recycled canards (ducks), which I’ve shot down countless times, factoring in the following verified facts and developments:
Suite upgrades: While, by simple logic, no program can possibly “guarantee” suite upgrades when type of every upgrade (a) depends on availability and (b) is at the sole discretion of each property, Hilton Honors recently introduced a highly innovative and exciting room upgrade scheme, including to suites, which automates room upgrades globally, to potentially and for the first time ever take individual properties out of the equation. The new upgrades are administered and prioritized by elite status just like airline cabin upgrades (Golds < Diamonds < Lifetime Diamonds), after the program made sure to clearly differentiate the three elite levels.
Do not take my word for it. Here's how a Hilton loyalty executive described the new upgrades scheme:
Did you see the “G” word (guaranteed) in there — it’s the first time to my knowledge that any program has ever used it explicitly — and that hotels cannot opt out of providing [the new global automated upgrade] benefit?
In addition, this is how Hilton Honors summarizes its space-available room upgrades benefit for Diamonds (the following is from each program’s website):
BOOM !
Here’s how Marriott BONVoY summarizes what it refers to as Enhanced Room Upgrade (Based on availability):
And here’s how World of Hyatt defines what it calls “preferred room upgrades based on availability at check-in at participating locations“:
Now, what precisely is this site’s basis for continuing to recycle the bogus claim that “With Hilton Honors status there is no promise of suites (you might get one but denying an available suite as an upgrade is fine in this program)” when, until the introduction of its highly innovative global automated upgrades Hilton’s policy has always been virtually identical to those of other programs?
No guaranteed late checkout: Correct. However, while I rank this benefit quite low, I have never been denied it for requests as late as 6pm in 12 consecutive years as a HH Diamond (and recently as a Lifetime Diamond on a Day Use rate). My trick: request a late checkout at check-in!
Food and beverage credit that replaced breakfast: only partially correct and disingenuous. Please specify that the change to F&B credit affects only hotels in the U.S. because overseas, the HH breakfast benefit continues to be nothing short of a royal feast. Moreover, as I argued before, the move to the F&B credit, which started during the pandemic, was likely due to the tight labor market, from which I’d predicted that the continental breakfast benefit is likely to be restored in the U.S. when the tight labor market loosens. Sure enough, and please update your posts with the following correct information which you can find in the HH FAQs:
The breakfast benefit has already been partially restored in the US…likely on its way to being reinstated at other hotels that offered it before the pandemic. It costs Hilton more to provide F&B vouchers — real money — than to offer free breakfast, whose “perceived” value to members is much higher than how much it costs Hilton to provide it — a concept known as reward leverage.
Lastly, the biggest canard of them all, which is based on a widely panned “simple” model for ranking hotel programs and which I recently showed mathematically and incontrovertibly to be dead wrong:
The bolded claim was rightly and widely panned by readers when it was first made. It is nonsensical because all hotel points currencies are worth exactly the same, a claim I also showed with rigorous math, which I will publish to put that claim to rest once and for all.
BTW, we are still waiting with bated breath for your response to the challenge that you invited and I responded to. The preceding is yet another challenge for you to respond to, so we’ll again be waiting with bate breath for a coherent and factual response.
As they say, put your money where your (cyber) mouth is…
G’day!
Do you / they really think an extra 2,000 points will drive extra business travel?
I also think the addition of holidays, including school holidays, are driving extra leisure travel and may be hurting business travel a bit. Was surprised to see airports to full during Columbus / Indigenous People’s / etc day.
Slight corrections in long comments for clarity:
— “opinion” rather than “option” in:
“This site’s latest attempt to yet again disparage what is a highly rewarding promotion is an angry scream for seeing a biased opinion of a program [being] constantly mocked by that program with superior offerings and innovative programmatic changes that end up being widely adopted.”
— “…every type of upgrade…” rather than “type of every upgrade” in:
“…no program can possibly “guarantee” suite upgrades when every type of upgrade (a) depends on availability…”
Botched html for bolding:
Marriott upgrade summary: “We’ll do our best to upgrade your room…” [a resounding promise!]
Hilton loyalty executive on automated upgrade prioritization: “…member status/tier is the first criteria considered.”
With a recession coming, is OPM travel really expected to increase anytime soon??
Parting Shot
A strong argument could be made that 2000 points could drive extra business from business travelers who do only one or two nights at a bunch of relatively inexpensive hotels.
Let’s do the simple math that the forum host should have done before making the wild claims in this post.
Let’s say a business traveler does a bunch of one-night stays that cost $150 each, everything included. What percentage of the total number of points earned would the extra 2000 points contribute if the business traveler were:
(a) an “Aspire” Diamond”
(b) a ‘Surpass’ Gold, which many for whom Hilton is not the primary program are:
Lastly, let’s do a comparison with the forum host’s preferred program’s Q4 promo, during which a WoH Globalist earns:
5x (base) + 5x (2x promo) + 1.5x (30% Globalist bonus) + 4x (Chase WoH Visa) = 15.5x
$150 * 15.5 WoH points/$ = 2,325 WoH points
Converting WoH points to Hilton points by adjusting for differences in base earn rates of 3HH/1WoH:
2,325 WoH points * 3HH/1WoH = 6,975 HH points
Bottom line: Per that scenario, a HH ‘Aspire’ Diamond would earn 7,600 HH points from the program’s Q4 promo, which are more than 6,975 equivalent HH points that a WoH Globalist would earn for their Q4 promo. Add the extra 2000 HH points disparaged by the forum to the ‘Aspire’ Diamonds total earn and it’s rout. Globalists would fare better for stays that would be about 10x more expensive than in the considered scenario.
Yeah, right. One must suspend reality to believe that a program can be “rewarding” when it offers members no promos! Fortunately, not all travel bloggers share that delusion:
@DCS – hello! @platty sends hello 🙂
On a serious note, I don’t have enough time in my day to read your (full of great information, I’m sure) message. Neither do I read what platty spews out…Sorry, mate! 😉
@DCS – I know you’re a big fan of Hilton (and HHonors, I’m sure). I like it too (joined in 1989). And I’m now Diamond in it, which is nice. But there are problems with it!
For example, I found out 2 days ago that one of the “Free Night” rewards which I earned before (maybe during) pandemic expires in a week. 3 calls to HHonors customer service, and they can’t and won’t extend it by more than 15 days! I need 1 month. They would not do it! Not a way to treat long term member and Diamond, imho. 15 days ok? 30 is no go? Why? Esp. since the expiration date on it was extended so many times, I lost track.
Now the biggest problem is – I only found out about expiration by accident. There’s no mechanism for notifying me (other, probably, too) of this. And we just stayed 3 nights at diff. Hilton hotel in VA and MD last week!!!
I will describe another problem in the separate post.
Another HHonors shortcoming, you don’t know which promos you’re signed up to. I seem to recall there was a promo (@Gary may be able to name it) for fall travel and stays at Hilton. And I know I signed up for it. It was some extra points after 1st (or 2nd?) stay. I can’t find if I’m signed up for it, what are the dates, etc. All I know, my last weeks stays didn’t generate any extra bonus points.
@Gennady — What is the purpose of your comment(s)? Of course Hilton has shortcomings like any program. My beef is with the constant obsession, by this site especially, to call winners and losers based on total misunderstanding of loyalty points currencies (e.g., this site’s so-called “simple” model for ranking hotel loyalty programs), as well as on bogus and self-serving “standards of excellence” hatched simply to make their preferred program(s) look better than they are, while disparaging programs about which they know practically close to nothing.
What I wrote above exposes and challenges both types of demonstrably bogus claims. You want to address me? Then read what I wrote so that I won’t have to repeat myself, and I also guarantee that’ll learn something.
As for you beef with Hilton offering to extend your expiring free night cert only two additional weeks because you did not bother checking the expiration date, or for purportedly not awarding you bonus points for a promo that you are not even sure you registered for , I would say that you have issues that are bigger than or have nothing to do with Hilton Honors shortcomings.
A couple of suggestions: (a) signup for a an AwardWallet account. It will remind you when your FN certs are about to expire.(b) In your Hilton Honors account, click the link to “My Offers” and it will take you to where you can find out which promos your registered for. For a HH “Diamond”, you do not seem to know the first thing about how to make the most of your status, which makes me question whether you are even a Diamond.
Lastly, I am HH Lifetime Diamond and I was told the other day my on FN cert expiring at the end of the year could be extended only couple of weeks. It did not bother me because I still have enough time to use it, and the only reason I still had it is that Hilton Honors, without anyone asking, had already extended my FN cert by 6 months, like it did everyone’s expiring certs — I bet you did not know that either before complaining.
As you can see, your “case” against HH is as sound as the one I debunked above…