Last updated on March 30th, 2013 at 11:26 pm
This week I am in Mountain View, CA through Wednesday. When I got to the hotel, I quickly realized that when I booked my room months ago, I only booked through Tuesday, so I needed to add another night to my stay.
This was easy enough, as the HIlton Garden had availability for Tuesday night, so I booked a room for the night. Along the way, I was presented with the following screen asking if I wanted to “upgrade” my room. Notice anything odd here?
First of all, I am pretty sure that these rooms are the exact room that I just booked. The Hilton Garden Inn is not exactly known for their massive room sizes, since most people are staying there for business. In fact, I’m pretty sure that all room sizes are basically the same – at least their website appears to only show a limited number of room options.
Maybe if they were to offer a suite I might be interested in an upgrade, but the room they offer was clearly very similar to what I had just booked.
The insulting part is the fact that they think I am dumb or naive enough to think that I am getting an “upgrade” when it’s the same room and that I value my Hilton Honors points so little that I would give up 45,360 points for one night in an “upgraded” room.
No effing way man.
To put this astronomical number of points in perspective, this is only 4,000 less HHonors points than I would need to use to redeem a night at a category 7 property, the most expensive category for Hilton redemptions which go for 50,000 points a night. When factoring my 25% off discount by booking 4 or more nights as a HHonors gold member, this is more than I am paying for a night at the Hilton in Moorea next year! All for an upgrade that doesn’t even exist!
Who would be dumb enough to upgrade their room at a mid-grade hotel for one night when they could use those points for some beautiful properties all over the world?
Hilton has been great to me over the years, but this automated offer from their website is just insulting.
Can you tell me how many points you needed for the Hilton Moorea? The website says 200,000 per night….
Leah – it depends on your travel dates. I booked it for 37,500 points per night (down from 50,000 points because I had a 4+ night discount). Entire trip was 225,000 for 6 nights.