Last year Hilton announced that they would be removing award categories. I said this was bad news for consumers as it means that Hilton is able to charge more for properties without informing their loyalty members that prices were increasing. Previously Hilton always announced what properties were changing categories in advance and this gave members advance notice. It’s also a good way of keeping hotel programs honest because if 1,000 properties increase a category (or two) and 20 properties decrease a category we know a mass devaluation has occurred. Hilton went out of their way to bury the lead on announcing the removal of award categories.
According to View From The Wing one third of properties that were category one (costing 5,000 points) are now category two or higher (costing 10,000 points or more). In fact one property now costs 30,000 points per night where it previously cost only 5,000 points. It’s not only category one properties that have gone up in price either, other properties have increased in price. I don’t have an issue with hotels charging more points for properties, the issue I have with Hilton is that there is no transparency at all. I’m sure some properties have also decreased in price when we compare to six months ago, the problem is there is no way for us to know that without manually checking.
If you want to have a truly dynamic loyalty program, that’s fine. But there needs to be someway that loyalty members can value their points reliably. Southwest does a great job of this by tying the cost of an award flight to the cash price of the ticket. I know my Southwest points will be worth 1.39¢ each towards flights. Currently I have no idea how much my Hilton points are worth, I also can’t save up a set amount of points for a specific redemption because at any time Hilton could change the price without any notice or oversight. Loyalty programs are supposed to reward loyal customers, but I don’t feel any sense of loyalty to a company such as Hilton that won’t be open and transparent with me.
