Hilton Honors’ Surprising Upgrade Priority

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While airlines are generally pretty transparent about the order in which elite upgrades are processed, the same often isn’t true of hotels. In other words, certain elite members may be eligible for room upgrades, but there’s not much published in terms of the order in which elite members are upgraded.

Along those lines, here are some interesting insights regarding Hilton Honors elite upgrades…

Hilton upgrades award stays before elite members

Hilton Honors recently started rolling out automated elite upgrades in advance, whereby elite members can be upgraded up to 72 hours prior to arrival. This is a cool feature, especially since it’s automated, so it takes some of the guessing out of the upgrade process.

Here’s an interesting twist, though. LoyaltyLobby reports what the alleged upgrade priority is for these automated upgrades. Here’s the priority order, according to this report:

Hilton Honors redemption stays costing more than 100,000 points per night are prioritized first; the minimum of 100,000 points means that this is mostly for people using the non-standard room redemption options, because a vast majority of properties cost under 100,000 points per nightLifetime Hilton Honors Diamond members are prioritized nextNon-lifetime Hilton Honors Diamond members are prioritized after thatHilton Honors Gold members are prioritized after that

This seems to just apply to the automated upgrade process — it’s anyone’s guess the extent to which this is followed for upgrades on the day of arrival.

Those redeeming lots of points have the highest upgrade priority

Why this is so interesting and surprising

There are a couple of things about Hilton Honors’ automated upgrade priority that are noteworthy.

First of all, lifetime Diamond members are upgraded ahead of non-lifetime Diamond members. Personally I think that’s how it should be — those members are as loyal as they get, and they should be rewarded as such. Nonetheless, programs like Marriott Bonvoy and World of Hyatt don’t prioritize upgrades for lifetime elite members (at least officially), even though I think they should. Kudos to Hilton for that.

The much more interesting thing here is that those redeeming lots of Hilton Honors points are upgraded ahead of everyone else:

This only applies when redeeming more than 100,000 Hilton Honors points per night, which would include those booking Hilton’s more expensive properties, and those booking expensive non-standard awardsOn the surface this would mean that at the Waldorf Astoria Maldives, a non-elite Hilton Honors member redeeming points would be upgraded ahead of a lifetime Diamond member paying cashMany hotels seem to treat those redeeming points as second class guests, and that’s never a nice way to feel when redeeming your hard earned pointsAt the same time, Hilton Honors is taking it to the extreme by upgrading non-elite members redeeming points ahead of elite members paying cash

Lifetime Diamond members have priority over other Diamond members

Bottom line

Hilton Honors recently rolled out automated elite upgrades, whereby some upgrades start to clear 72 hours before a stay. This is an awesome feature, since it takes the last minute guessing game out of upgrades.

What’s most noteworthy here is the order in which upgrades allegedly clear — not only are lifetime Diamond members upgraded ahead of other Diamond members, but those redeeming 100K+ Hilton Honors points per night are upgraded ahead of everyone else.

What do you make of Hilton Honors’ alleged automated upgrade order?

By: Ben Schlappig
Title: Hilton Honors’ Surprising Upgrade Priority
Sourced From: onemileatatime.com/insights/hilton-honors-upgrade-priority/
Published Date: Sun, 07 Nov 2021 14:01:14 +0000

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