Hilton Honors is following Hyatt that introduced confirmed suite upgrades at the time of booking and Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG) that introduced Suite Night Awards (confirmable within five days of arrival).
Hilton Honors launched a pilot on January 21st and invited small number of qualified Diamond members (first leaked on FT post here) and TPG got confirmation of the program on Friday (read more here).
You can access Hilton Honors here.
READ MORE: HIlton Honors Rate & Bonus Points And Miles Promotions
Small number of members were given one certificate that must be redeemed by the end of March this year for a stay for up to 12 months into the future. The certificate is valid for both paid and award stays for up to 7 days.
Conclusion
Hilton Honors offers its Diamond status to certain affinity credit card holders and needs to do better job at rewarding those members that actually stay at their hotels.
By introducing milestones bonuses in 2018 and perhaps confirmed suite upgrades later in 2019, it could achieve just this.
Seems that this trial is very limited and I am not exactly sure how these upgrades are handled and if they are only applicable for stays at certain properties?
I have generally been satisfied with Diamond upgrades at international hotels (junior and proper suites often) and hope that these confirmed upgrades won’t change the equation.
Hilton has very small number of truly aspirational properties. Not sure how they would handle the influx of suite upgrade requests from members that are redeeming points at them?
