How does Hilton’s ‘guaranteed connecting hotel rooms’ feature work?
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The inability to guarantee connecting hotel rooms has been a MASSIVE bug bear of mine. It is no longer such a big issue as our children get older and can look after themselves, but we struggled with it for years.
Is it really so difficult to guarantee connecting rooms? It seems so. Whilst an airline can happily run a seating map for every single flight for the next year, it appears that hotels cannot run forward room plans. They can sell a certain number of rooms per night in each category but are incapable of doing much else.
It isn’t just budget and mid-range hotels which struggle with this. In my experience, you are just as likely to have trouble at five star properties. One of the biggest benefits of working with Emyr Thomas at Bon Vivant to book hotels for my personal stays is that he will, if we have requested connecting rooms, call his contact at the hotel on the day of arrival. Hotels don’t like annoying Virtuoso agents because of the profile of their client base, so it gets done. (This isn’t special treatment for me, by the way. He will do it on your bookings too.)
Hilton has pulled off the necessary IT investment, and you can book connecting rooms at many hotels via the website.
How do Hilton’s connecting rooms work?
The trigger for launching this was Hilton’s new Motto chain. This is a new budget brand which “offers an expanded connecting room concept where guests have the ability to book up to nine unique connecting room configurations with adaptable furniture and modern design to create the ideal accommodation and social environment for group travel.“
Once Hilton was forced to develop the necessary IT to link rooms together in order for Motto to work, it was relatively simple to roll it out chainwide for bog-standard pairs of connecting rooms.
This is how it works. Make sure that you select ‘two rooms’ in the hilton.com booking system and then proceed to book as usual.
You need to book at least 72 hours in advance to take advantage of guaranteed connecting rooms.
When you select your chosen hotel from the various options, you will see a little box you can tick:
If you don’t see this, your hotel is not currently offering the service.
Tick the box and it will remove room types which cannot be connected:
You can then go ahead and complete the booking as you usually would, selecting from those room options which can connect.
An extra benefit for Hilton is that you need to book direct to get this benefit rather than via an intermediary. It saves the cost of those pesky 22% commissions to Hotels.com etc. However, reader feeback in the comments below suggests that some hotels add a small price premium if you choose connecting rooms and pay cash – points prices are unchanged.
You can find out more about connecting rooms on this special page of the Hilton website.
How to earn Hilton Honors points and status from UK credit cards (April 2024)
There are various ways of earning Hilton Honors points from UK credit cards. Many cards also have generous sign-up bonuses.
Do you know that holders of The Platinum Card from American Express receive FREE Hilton Honors Gold status for as long as they hold the card? It also comes with Marriott Bonvoy Gold, Radisson Rewards Premium and MeliaRewards Gold status. We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here and you can apply here.
The Platinum Card from American Express
40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review
Did you know that the Virgin Atlantic credit cards are a great way of earning Hilton Honors points? Two Virgin Points can be converted into three Hilton Honors points. The Virgin Atlantic cards are the only Visa or Mastercard products in the UK which can indirectly earn Hilton Honors points. You can apply here.
You can also earn Hilton Honors points indirectly with:
- American Express Gold (20,000 bonus Amex points)
- American Express Rewards Credit Card (10,000 bonus Amex points)
and for small business owners:
- American Express Business Gold (20,000 bonus Amex points)
- American Express Business Platinum (40,000 bonus Amex points)
The conversion rate from American Express to Hilton points is 1:2.
(Want to earn more hotel points? Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
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