I’ve been loyal to the Hilton family of hotels now for several years. Over the past year, as an HHonors Diamond, I’ve increasingly felt like my loyalty is unrequited. Finally, last month, I decided I was giving up on the program and, with it, Hilton hotels in general. Here’s why:
Status Give-aways to Anybody
Qualifying for HHonors Gold requires 16 stays or 36 nights at a Hilton property; for Diamond it’s 28 stays or 60 nights. This year I logged twenty stays, making Gold for next year. A few months ago, anybody with a Visa Signature card could gotten the same status without doing anything other than asking for it. I was not eligible for the promotion because I was already elite. As I type this (December), anyone with a code widely available on the Internet can get Gold just for registering with that code. My loyalty of 20 stays is being rewarded with Gold status, the same thing available to everyone just for the asking?
This matters because I will now be competing with these same people for rooms, upgrades, and other amenities. It also matters because it says to those of us who achieved our status by being loyal to the brand “you are a chump.”
Lack of Upgrades
Twenty stays at Hilton properties this year from Pensacola to Paris and Seattle to Dublin to Warsaw, and I saw zero room upgrades. Zero. Not one. The closest I came was the Hilton HHonors floor, which is just the same as the others except that it has a plaque in or near the elevator lobby that announces that it’s the HHonors floor. No suite for me. No junior suite. Nothing of the sort. And, in more than one instance, mentioning that I was Diamond and asking if an upgrade was available got me nothing more than a dismissive grunt.
Lackluster Properties
Then there are the properties themselves. There are some really nice Hiltons out there, don’t get me wrong, but there are so, so many mediocre or just plain bad ones. There seems to be no standard and the quality is so spotty that one never knows quite what to expect. The problem is within each brand and across their brands: some Hilton Garden Inns are better than some Hiltons; some Doubltrees are okay or even nice, while most are lacking, to say the least. Hilton's whole branding strategy needs some serious rethinking: I should be able to tell if I’m in a Doubletree or a Hilton or a Hilton Garden Inn or a Hampton Inn just by looking around the property. Their brands should speak for themselves and they just don't.
Severe Devaluation of HHonors Points
Then there’s the severe devaluation of the points that Hilton undertook more than a year ago. For instance, I stayed at a property in Paris the November before devaluation at a cost of 40,000 points per night. I tried to book into the same property this October: about 120,000 points per night. Before Diamond members had the benefit of the Diamond Desk calling the hotel to do a “Diamond Force.” That is no longer offered, further diminishing the points and the value of the program. The crux of the change in points pricing is that hotels have a certain number of "standard"-point-rate rooms. Once that inventory is exhausted, you can still book a room with points but this is where they really sock it to you and where the real devaluation shows. They've basically gutted the program.
This is all too bad. I used to love the HHonors program and was willing to overlook its shortcomings and the glaring issues with the properties themselves. But now I’m just giving up and moving on. So, to all of the new HHonors members who are suddenly Gold for the asking, enjoy the program. You’ll have one less HHonors Gold member to compete with for your benefits.
