Hilton to sell room upgrades to Gold and Diamond elites

[Lady London]

Robm wrote:

It is going to depend on a number of factors as to whether you get an upgrade. As a datapoint, I stayed at the Hilton at St George’s Park, got the same automated email upselling me better rooms. Ignored all that and was pleased to find out at check in that we’d been upgraded to a lovely, massive one bed suite. (A few categories above the basic room we had booked).

St George’s Park has exceptionally good reports though, by default you wouldn’t expect the same at other Hiltons

[Robm]

Cheers @TherealSwissTony – I’ll give that hotel a miss.

@ladylondon completely agree. I’d highly recommend St George’s Park. It is frustrating that it is inconsistent across hotels and can feel like pot luck/ no luck.

I sometimes use trip advisor and search the hotel reviews for “gold” “diamond” and “upgrade” to help me understand what the upgrade policy/ treatment of loyalty guests is like. It can help avoiding hotels which are dire – or at least helps me manage my expectations.

[Robm]

I am pleased that there doesn’t seem to have been a Hilton wide policy change in complimentary upgrades – since they are now upselling them consistently in advance. I feel like it has always been the way with an element of pot luck/ some hotels being consistently poor/ seeming to purposefully ignore the “availability dependant” upgrade completely – even if they have lots of availability.

[Blair Waldorf Salad]

Just off the phone with a Curio where I am staying this weekend. Without promoting the front desk agent said they would proceed to identify upgrade opportunities overnight based on my (Diamond) status. No money requested or suggested.

[dahokolomoki]

I’d say that free room upgrades are still plentiful, but one should definitely not assume it is a “given” and especially at Gold level.

Two notable upgrades I’ve had:

Hilton Dubrovnik. Went in Sep21. Paid 200EUR/nt for base room. Got best price guarantee on it, which brought it down to like 140EUR! And then got upgraded to a one bedroom suite, and exec lounge access, along with free breakfast as the diamond benefit. The second most value I’d ever gotten out of a Hilton stay, because the next one was even better…

Conrad Maldives. Booked on points, over Christmas in Dec20. And this was points bought with 100% bonus too. First got upgraded to the Overwater Villas. Checked in, but complained it was far from the main island, and also some niggling issues in the room. So they upgraded us to a two bedroom beachfront villa on the main island. More than a double/triple level upgrade IMO.

Granted, both the biggest upgrade success stories were during COVID times in 2020 and 2021, and I don’t expect much. So far this year, I’ve been in Hampton Inns, Homewood Suites for work… so not much chance of upgrades as they only have one room type there. But when I was at the Hilton Mallorca Galatzo this September 2022, I did get a double upgrade from the base room.

With regards to having a poor experience in some hotels… if you don’t go for hotels that are poorly rated (<4 stars on TA, <4 stars on Google) then you avoid this. A crap hotel is still crap even if you have Diamond status and get a “better” crap room.