Hilton now lets you GUARANTEE connecting hotel rooms – so I booked two

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The inability to guarantee connecting hotel rooms has been a MASSIVE bug bear of mine. To be honest, it is no longer such a big issue as our children get older, but we struggled with it for years.

Is it really so difficult to guarantee connecting rooms? It seems so. Whilst an airline can happily run a seating map for every single flight for the next year, it appears that hotels cannot run forward room plans. They can sell a certain number of rooms per night in each category but are incapable of doing much else.

Hilton now lets you GUARANTEE connecting rooms

It isn’t just budget and mid-range hotels which struggle with this. In experience, you are just as likely to have trouble at five star properties. One of the biggest benefits of working with Emyr Thomas at Bon Vivant to book hotels for my personal stays is that he will, if we have requested connecting rooms, call his contact at the hotel on the day of arrival. Because hotels don’t like annoying Virtuoso agents, because of the profile of their client base, it gets done. (This isn’t special treatment for me, by the way. He will do it on your bookings too.)

Hilton has now pulled off the necessary IT, and you can book connecting rooms at many hotels via the website.

How do Hilton’s connecting rooms work?

The trigger for launching this, it seems, was Hilton’s new Motto chain. This is a new budget brand which “offers an expanded connecting room concept where guests have the ability to book up to nine unique connecting room configurations with adaptable furniture and modern design to create the ideal accommodation and social environment for group travel.“

Once Hilton was forced to develop the necessary IT to link rooms together in order for Motto to work, it was relatively simple to roll it out chainwide for bog-standard pairs of connecting rooms.

It is very simple. I have just booked two at the Hampton hotel at Stansted Airport which I reviewed last year and is pictured above. It is a perfectly acceptable property and just a few seconds walk from the terminal building, albeit that you do need to go outside to reach it.

When you come to book on hilton.com, you will see a little box you can tick:

If you don’t see this, your hotel is not currently offering the service.

Select this and it will remove rooms types which cannot be connected. Make sure that you select ‘two rooms’ in the booking system and book as usual. That’s it.

If you are starting with a city-wide search (eg ‘London’, rather than ‘Hilton Paddington’) then ticking this box will remove hotels which cannot guarantee connecting rooms, allowing you choose from those that remain.

Once booked, you see this confirmation message:

An extra benefit for Hilton, of course, is that you need to book direct to get this benefit rather than via an intermediary. It saves the cost of those pesky 22% commissions to Hotels.com etc ….

You can find out more about connecting rooms on this special page of the Hilton website.

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This article is closed to new posts. Discussion continues in the HfP Forums.

Waribai says:

21 Jul21 July 05:35

Yes, a huge annoyance for our family too. What actually annoys me most is when you email/phone ahead to put in a request for interconnecting rooms, you are told it is done and when you arrive it is not….
- Rob says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 08:54
  
  Been there, done that, even when paying £1000 per night.
Hardpack says:

21 Jul21 July 05:36

I’d rather have a guarantee NOT to be in a room with a connecting door.
- tony says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 06:32
  
  And this goes some way to doing that. The number of occasions we’ve requested connecting rooms and have indeed been given rooms that connect – just not to each other – is comical.
  
  Radisson had this figured out over a decade ago. They used to sell family suites in some properties (we used it at MAN and STN) which were just two connecting rooms. Presumably if the hotel sold out of regular rooms, it was easy enough just to break these back into two separate rooms.
  
  Be fascinating to see if Hilton actually crack this.
- Chris Heyes says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 06:38
  
  Hardpack I agree Grand-Children (and Daughters) can be extremely annoying
  4/5 rooms away is the best. or ideally 4/5 hotels away
- E says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 07:06
  
  Agree Hardpack. Being in a room without a connecting door is something I’d really like to be able to select so that I no longer hear next door’s TV, video calls, or conversations. I’m rarely in a position where I book multiple rooms anyway.
  - planeconcorde says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 07:33
    
    Cruise ship companies cracked this issue years ago. Their deck plans show exactly which cabins have connecting doors and which other cabin they connect to. Passengers can use this information to either book or avoid particular cabins.
    - Rob says:
      
      21 Jul21 July 08:51
      
      The Jumeirah hotels in Dubai generally have each block of two room doors given a joint extra initial door, which is usually permanently open. This means that any two adjacent rooms can connect (by leaving their front doors open, and closing the outer door) but none have internal doors which seems a smart solution.
      - Doug M says:
        
        21 Jul21 July 10:11
        
        I’ve seen this in Florida. Pretty sure it’s Point Orlando, just off I-Drive. Had a one bed suite, with a kitchen, so did wonder if you booked the whole thing you’d have two kitchens.
      - tony says:
        
        21 Jul21 July 10:22
        
        Same arrangement in the ShangriLa valley wing in SG – although we’ve never had a problem getting connecting rooms assigned in Asia, and that’s probably across 30+ hotel stays.
  - Hardpack says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 09:10
    
    That’s exactly what I don’t like about them
- Harry T says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 09:10
  
  Agreed, I’m just going to ask for another room next time I’m given a room with an interconnecting door!
  - E says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 09:40
    
    I try to check this ask at reception but I don’t always remember.
Yuff says:

21 Jul21 July 07:22

Requested it at IC park lane last week, was told they couid not guarantee it but when we arrived the rooms were connecting.
Handy to have it in the app though.
Have a booking at Conrad st james in December so will try and sort this out if I can’t get an upgrade to a 2 bed suite
- GaryE says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 07:48
  
  I have found that once booking the hotels if you phone the front desk at the hotel – not central reservations – then they will amend their system to ensure your two rooms are interconnecting. I have asked them to confirm this in writing and have done so.
  - Andrew says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 08:35
    
    +1 – I’ve done this with a few hotels, including Radisson (of various shades) and even Premier Inn who have always been super helpful
Simon says:

21 Jul21 July 07:45

Niche comment coming up I know, but this is a real differentiator for the Hilton properties at Disney Springs. If they can continue to offer all the same park access/”on property” benefits as the Disney-owned hotels, but can sell you a “suite” at a fraction of the price of one in a mainstream Disney hotel, then I suspect they’ll do very well. (Still not necessarily a good use of points, depending on the time of year…)
- SammyJ says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 08:40
  
  You cop the resort fee twice there don’t you? That annoys me at hotels where we need 2 rooms rather than a 2-bed suite, as both rooms sleep 4, but taking 2 rooms for the same 4 people means we have to pay it twice.
  - The Savage Squirrel says:
    
    21 Jul21 July 13:13
    
    It’s a big differentiator in the cash/points maths … no resort fees on reward stays moves the dial big-time and makes it likely that points is the way to go most of the time at any property with a resort fee.
GaryE says:

21 Jul21 July 07:45

Booked the Doubletree at Manchester Airport and it worked perfectly. Also remember it might be worth checking the room rates – as if the flexible rate is similar to the Hilton Discount rate then you get the 2nd room for half price. This cannot be done online but via calling the hotel once you have a confirmation number and they will amend the price of the 2nd room.
- Zara says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 18:33
  
  I’ve never known this before. How is the second room half price? I’d be so keen to know this as we often book atleast 2 rooms! TIA
Liz says:

21 Jul21 July 09:20

This post is amazing!!!! We have two kids, 1 year old and 3 years old. It’s a pain to book hotel rooms. And we dislike holiday lets/ AirBNB. When we just had one kid, we could get away with just an extra cot in the room. Now it gets kinda cosy with two kids. They are still too little to sleep by themselves, so connecting rooms are great. But trying to get the hotel to guarantee/ give us connecting rooms involves a lot of (unnecessary) chasing up, and often, a lot of arguing at the front desk.
- Ben says:
  
  21 Jul21 July 14:36
  
  This is the same position as us. 4yo and 2yo. We can just get the youngest in a cot. Trying to stay in a single room is so difficult (although cheaper).
  
  This week in Hilton Brighton my wife and me have been having evening drinks on the bathroom floor once we’ve put them to bed (I foolishly didn’t book the balcony room!). In a duplex in the Doubletree Kensington from tomorrow, let’s see how much better than is!
JohnT says:

21 Jul21 July 10:39

I also found Accessible rooms an issue, having to phone up even if a tick box selected. May just have missed it on Hilton before but recently saw an option when looking at room types to specifically choose an Accessible room.
Dave says:

21 Jul21 July 11:32

I stayed at a Hampton last month and simply chose two rooms during check-in that had connecting doors.
I guess knowing for certain you’ll get a connecting room will be a relief for many.
- Bagoly says:
  
  22 Jul22 July 18:24
  
  Like updating address details online, this is where the hotel getting the customer to do the work of checking is better for most customers.
  Leaving it to check-in is fine when occupancy is low, but will not be reliable as things get back to normal.