After Hilton’s dramatic award chart gutting of three years ago, there weren’t huge changes again last 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 March 30.
24 get go up in category and 15 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. Inthe previous four quarters of announcements we’ve seen 89 hotels go up in category and 32 go down (that’s 3-1 increases over decreases).
- More important Hilton no longer has 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 DECREASE |
||||||
|
Hotel Name
|
City
|
State
|
Country
|
Previous Reward Category
|
New Reward Category
|
Effective Date
|
| DoubleTree Resort by Hilton Hainan Qixianling Hot Spring | Baoting | China | Category 6 | Category 4 | March 30, 2016 | |
| Hilton Petaling Jaya | Petaling Jaya | Malaysia | Category 4 | Category 2 | March 30, 2016 | |
| Hilton Santa Fe – Mexico City | Mexico City | Mexico | Category 6 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 | |
| Hilton Newcastle Gateshead | Newcastle Upon Tyne | United Kingdom | Category 6 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 | |
| Hampton Inn Daytona/Ormond Beach | Ormond Beach | FL | United States | Category 7 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Dublin | Dublin | GA | United States | Category 3 | Category 2 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Covington | Covington | LA | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Houma | Houma | LA | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn & Suites Thibodaux | Thibodaux | LA | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Broussard-Lafayette Area | Broussard | LA | United States | Category 5 | Category 4 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Yazoo City | Yazoo City | MS | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn & Suites Center | Center | TX | United States | Category 3 | Category 2 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Cotulla | Cotulla | TX | United States | Category 4 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Beeville | Beeville | TX | United States | Category 5 | Category 4 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Victoria | Victoria | TX | United States | Category 5 | Category 4 | March 30, 2016 |
|
Hotel Name
|
City
|
State
|
Country
|
Previous Reward Category
|
New Reward Category
|
Effective Date
|
| Hampton Inn & Suites Opelika | Opelika | AL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Jonesboro | Jonesboro | AR | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Phoenix/Glendale/Peoria | Peoria | AZ | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Garden Inn Flagstaff | Flagstaff | AZ | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Garden Inn Sonoma County Airport | Santa Rosa | CA | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Singer Island Oceanfront Resort | Singer Island | FL | United States | Category 6 | Caegory 7 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Garden Inn Orlando @ Sea World International Center | Orlando | FL | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Garden Inn Ft. Myers FL | Ft Myers | FL | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn & Suites Ft. Myers Colonial Rd | Fort Myers | FL | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn & Suites Cape Coral | Cape Coral | FL | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hilton Garden Inn Fort Lauderdale / Hollywood Airport | Dania Beach | FL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Homewood Suites by Hilton Ft. Lauderdale Airport and Cruise Port | Dania Beach | FL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Bonita Springs/Naples-North | Bonita Springs | FL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Homewood Suites Bonita Springs | Bonita Springs | FL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn New Smyrna Beach | New Smyrna Beach | FL | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Atlanta / Fairburn | Fairburn | GA | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Gainesville | Gainesville | GA | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Douglas | Douglas | GA | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Milledgeville | Milledgeville | GA | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn By Hilton Leavenworth | Leavenworth | KS | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Raleigh / Town of Wake Forest | Wake Forest | NC | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| Hampton Inn Mansfield/Ontario | Mansfield | OH | United States | Category 2 | Category 3 | March 30, 2016 |
| DoubleTree Portland Tigard | Tigard | OR | United States | Category 4 | Category 5 | March 30, 2016 |
| Embassy Portland/Washington Square | Tigard | OR | United States | Category 5 | Category 6 | March 30, 2016 |
The HGI and HWS at FLL are bumping to Cat 6…is this just to take more from the cruise ship pax that are forced to overnight?
Hampton Daytona was a 7? A Hampton?!?!?!?!
Oh, FGS.
@Colleen Daytona native here, and I thought the exact same thing reading this. The Hampton Inn Daytona/Ormond Beach is not even in Daytona – it’s a little north in Ormond Beach. And it isn’t even one of the two local Hampton Inns on the beach (Daytona Beach/Beachfront and Daytona Beach Shores-Oceanfront) – it’s an Interstate hotel that’s about as far from anything you could be while still considered in the Daytona area.
@Colleen, Jonathan – yep, same thoughts. Daytona-area native as well…very strange. All I can think is that they are trying to milk the bikers and race fans for all they’ve got, or they just plain want to deter award reservations so that they can price gouge. Now that said, it doesn’t surprise me at all that the NSB property jumped up a category because: 1) that’s a really nice Hampton and 2) NSB has become quite hip again with the moneyed retiree set.
Also, Gary, you’ve gotta give it a rest on the Hilton devaluation jabs. Three years ago? We get it that you don’t like Hilton, but c’mon, man.
@CW point is that HHonors points used to be super valuable and now they’re not so much, there was a clear demarcation point
Understood, Gary, but life goes on. You have my permission to not mention March 22 in every single AA article going forward! 😀
@CW I do still reference the April 8 2014 massAAcre…
Thanks for posting this, was just talking about burning some points in Sonoma later this year at the HGI so might as well book it now.
Saw the Bangkok Conrad picture and freaked out. So no changes to that property at this time?
Let’s use a new name for Hilton’s “loyalty” program -> “Hilton Dishonors”…like the “Delta Skypesos”..
I didn’t see the link to click through to Hilton’s announcement, but you’re copy/paste has Hampton Inn Gainesville, FL going from Cat2 to 3. It’s a cat 6 (30k) point as of right now. So what gives?