Hilton is testing discounted rates for HHonors members. The rates will be available at certain hotels in four cities when booking through Hilton channels.

• New York
  
• Miami
  
• Houston
  
• San Diego

This may provide a benefit to membership, and joining the program is a benefit to Hilton since you’re easier to market to and your purchase behavior is easier to track.

Hilton Toiletries

It also provides an incentive to book direct through Hilton, saving on commissions that can be as high as 20%. Requiring membership makes it not a publicly available rate, and generally exempt from any rate parity agreements they’ve signed.

No doubt Hilton will be testing this to see what kinds of discounts matter, and whether the cost (in lower room rate) is made up for in either incremental bookings or commission savings by shifting business away from third party channels. The Gate says we’re seeing discounts at some properties of ~ 5%.

Conrad New York

In 2014 Hyatt introduced discounted room rates for elites but discontinued it at the end of the year.

They offered 20% off BAR (“Hyatt Daily Rate”) which was a great deal — there are easy to get 10% discounts like AAA membership but Hyatt’s AAA discounts aren’t available worldwide.

The fact that I was so disappointed to see these rates go also likely aligns with the reason they were eliminated, they were too generous and probably didn’t have enough benefit to Hyatt in their testing.

It’s interesting to see Hilton test something like this with HHonors members generally “over the next few months” but at a limited set of properties. And at a minimum it seems worth checking the Hilton website, likely logged in, if you’re booking a hotel in the four test cities.