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With an interesting promotion to ¨travel hack¨and a healthy stash of Hilton Honors points, I’ve been spending some time lately looking for a weekend getaway or two. Unfortunately this means that I have come across one of the more frustrating elements of Hilton’s website.
I decided to look at the possibility of a 3-night stay at a nearby hotel with a pool. Using the flexible dates function on the Hilton website, I was offered the following:
The best I could find is 24,000 points per night for 3 nights. “Points per Night” is very clear isn’t it…
However, the weekend of 18-21 September would be more convenient for us. So I clicked on the 26,000 points per night button.
No apparent issues…
Still 26,000 points per night. Moving onwards…
Still just going to cost me 26,000 points per night…
Once I log into my Hilton Honors account, I reach the confirmation page. With all of my details already filled in, I just have to click one more button.
But hang on a second. 26,000 per night for 3 nights is NOT 92,000 total points for stay! Looking at the breakdown allows me to see that only the first night is priced at 26,000 points…
Isn’t This Illegal?
I’m not a lawyer, but this looks rather dodgy to me. There are no asterisks suggesting a price change, no clarification that “award pricing may vary nightly”. Simply a quoted price, in points per night, repeated more than once, that is simply not honoured by the time the member reaches the confirmation page.
The Practical Implications
I’m not sure… I suspect that hotel chains have more leeway for bad IT when it comes to providing free award nights that don’t involve a cash payment. Otherwise the authorities would surely crack down hard on this sort of misleading advertising.
But it definitely means that the Hilton Honors calendar search function is essentially useless when looking for multiple-night stays. It will only show you the cost of the first night, at best…
Have you come across a similar situation or come up with a useful work-around? Let us know in the comments section…
Yeah this is atrocious and I’d expect a refund if you mistakenly booked after several invitations to treat at the quoted price.
Yes. Under U.K. law, the “price” shown at the start of the user journey has to be what you ultimately pay. Companies can’t change that or add on other items, unless those are clearly mentioned at the start. Remember how Ryanair squirmed when they were caught out. I’m sure IHG shows the average points needed when you redeem with them, so although you’d see a similar day-by-day breakdown on the final screen, your total would be the same as shown at the start.