One of the things that should be a regular to-do for any frequent traveler is constant grooming of your travel reservations. It’s how I realized I had forgotten to book a flight I thought I had, and how you can avoid things like Delta making you sit far away from your little children
(SEE ALSO: Delta just split up my family!)
Checking your Southwest reservations
The Southwest Airlines cancellation policy is one of the best in the business, and also periodically runs fare sales. Savvy travelers know that every time Southwest does a fare sale, they should go through each of their upcoming reservations and cancel the Southwest flight and rebook it. It’s how Southwest paid me to take the same flight!
Now it’s Hilton’s turn?
Hilton announced some major changes to its loyalty program back in February, and they have been rolling those out over the past few months. One of those changes was the removal of its award chart. We speculated that this would lead to dynamic pricing, and it appears so.
[Time’s running out to get 80,000 or 100,000 Hilton points (or both)!]
Here’s an example from my recent trip to Peru at the Doubletree El Pardo in Lima. Originally I booked this ticket for 29,000 Hilton points
then the next day I went back in and saw that the price had gone down!
I can’t remember what the cash price was originally, but I assume it was higher. Since I almost always book refundable hotel reservations (basically for this very reason), I simply canceled the original booking and rebooked the room at the lower price, saving myself 5000 Hilton points in the process. I know Hilton points aren’t worth THAT much, but it’s still probably ~$20!
I’m in the habit of doing this for my cash hotel bookings (which is one of the reason I book refundable reservations) but consider this your heads up that you should do this with all Hilton AWARD reservations as well
Did you know that you can often rebook Hilton award reservations for fewer points?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
As soon as Hilton Honors tied the points redemption rate to the cash rate, it was only logical to assume that the redemption rate would fluctuate and you could make a change in your favor. That being said, it’s a good heads-up for those who are not obsessive about checking rates.
I had a room in Cleveland booked for 64,000 points, looked at it 2.5 months later and it was 20,000 points. Hilton is really lame lately
Definitely need to check Hilton rates over time. I often book non-refundable most of the time, but they have been running these “sales” (whether they are or not is another matter) – just recently announced 40% off Asia-Pacific – and rooms are now rather lower in dollars than I had booked previously. The catch is that to book will require non-refundable rooms. Oddly, the point cost has actually gone up. Odd.
Thanks for the heads-up . . . of course it can also work the other way: my stay in NYC this Fall would now cost 10,000 more points per night if I re-booked it today. Still, *definitely* worth re-checking from time to time between now and then . . . .
This can definitely go both ways! I wrote about it a couple of months ago when the change was happening and saw many mid-tier properties benefiting from the new system in this way.
http://runningwithmiles.boardingarea.com/one-thing-to-be-careful-of-with-the-new-hilton-honors/
Thanks Charlie – I think overall for many mid-tier properties the points cost has gone DOWN (which is a good thing) but what I didn’t realize was that you need to double check your reservations in case the prices go down even MORE after you book it