The HfP chat thread – Monday 8th November

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• Stephan says:

  8 Nov8 November 15:30

  How you find ratings on lounges? Want to find the best lounge in Gatwick North terminal.

  • Blair says:

    8 Nov8 November 15:33

    Read the reviews on HfP and also in this comments section people will advise on latest experiences as most reviews are pre-Covid excuse era

  • Alan says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:15

    Based on recent experience I would say it is the new Plaza Premium lounge located in the old Virgin Clubhouse.

• trader363 says:

  8 Nov8 November 15:48

  I have the Waldorf Astoria Ithaafushi in the Maldives booked using approx 500k HH points for 27th Jan to 1st Feb 2022. King Grand Reef Villa. I believe the dates can be moved to anytime in 2022.

  Mr and the Mrs have decided not to do the Maldives (as we’ve done it before). Hilton has confirmed we can transfer to a different name. If anyone is interesting in buying this off me, please get in touch via Rob/Rhys who can give you my email address

  • aviosnewbie says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:01

    Awesome! I’d love to…are there any date restrictions?

    I am available on aviosnewbie at Gmail dot com if can pls get in touch. How many nights is it? I am HH gold, so can we get the additional night?

    Thanks so much for the kind gesture!

  • YC says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:20

    How are you able to move them to any dates? Surely its based on availability – which is very restrictive at this property

    • HH says:

      8 Nov8 November 16:35

      Exactly this. I spent a week at the WA on points shortly after opening in 2019, but it’s now virtually impossible to find standard redemptions for sequential nights – so I’m not sure how you’ll move them to any date?

  • Lee says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:34

    Base room in Waldorf Astoria Maldives is 150,000 points, 5 nights should be 600k.

    • HH says:

      8 Nov8 November 16:42

      Has it gone up? I paid 120k/night for WA just before covid, so with 5 nights for 4 it set me back 480k.

    • Can says:

      8 Nov8 November 17:23

      Sorry for being a goof-ball but What am I missing here?
      WA Maldives has been at least 1m points per night everytime I checked over many many months?
      How did you achieve it for 120-150k?

      • Benilyn says:

        8 Nov8 November 17:26

        They do have 120k-150k availability, just very hard to get. I got 5x nights at 120k (5th free) and so have many others.

      • Rob says:

        8 Nov8 November 17:27

        1m is the rate for a Premium room (ie Hilton buys the room for you for cash and using your points to pay it at a bad rate).

        If you book from standard reward availability it is 150k. The problem is that rooms tend to get booked a year in advance. Occasionally there is a ‘drop’ and sites like ours will do an article and you can jump in quickly.

        • Can says:

          8 Nov8 November 17:32

          thanks. I must say I never seen a 120k-150k availability recently for the whole year till Nov 2022, all I saw was the Premium rate Rob mentioned. That’s just insane!

      • HH says:

        8 Nov8 November 17:30

        The 1m are premium redemptions. There’s a much more limited inventory of standard redemption rooms that go for 120k (/150k now?). Initially these used to be beach villas, but they changed to reef villas in 2020.

        If you look a year in advance you should be able to see some availability, but as I said rarely for multiple consecutive nights.

        • Can says:

          8 Nov8 November 17:38

          Thanks, you’re right, some hope for 1-2 nights availability there..

  • trader363 says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:45

    I’ve asked the hotel if they can move the dates and optimistically presumed it wouldn’t be an issue but am waiting for a response

    Just checked and I paid 570k HH (120k 1st night, 150k x 3 nights and 5th night free)

    Thanks Aviosnewbie – will drop you an email and check if the dates work for you

    • Tom H says:

      8 Nov8 November 18:49

      very optimistic! They wouldn’t even move mine when they closed in the first wave, they just refunded me!

      • trader363 says:

        8 Nov8 November 18:54

        Tom H – You were right – I was very niavely optimistic. The hotel confirmed the dates can’t be moved.

        To the people that reached out, thanks – will reply to you all shortly

• TS77 says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:04

  Has anyone booked a Europcar oneWay for £1 recently? I’m seeing the error…

  Sorry, an error occurred, please try again or contact us.

  • BJ says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:19

    I think somebody else posted over the weekend that they were no longer available.

  • Shaw West says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:33

    I did manage to book one in September. Called again last week and the agent said the offer is currently suspended. Had to fork out £150 for a one way.

  • Simon says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:46

    Link has gone. I used it on the 9th October from Enfield to Heathrow. Right in the middle of the fuel crisis so was a bit worried about refuelling!

    • Magic Mike says:

      8 Nov8 November 22:19

      Comes and goes. I used in late Sept also during the fuel crisis, didn’t refuel as I couldn’t, and they didn’t seem to care at LHR. Result!

• ts77 says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:12

  I just called Europcar, the offer is no longer valid sadly.

• Grimz says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:15

  I have a booking INV – LHR- PHX and Return San Diego – LHR – ABZ. The San Diego leg got cancelled and they rebooked me the next day. I have had a carry on with BA about rebooking a year from outbound date v Ticket validity date but they are going to do it when flights become available. I would prefer the outbound going into San Diego and the return from PHX. They say I can only change the San Diego leg as it was the leg that was cancelled. Does that sound right? Its all within 350 miles. They have put some kind of marker on my booking to allow me this change when the flights become available.

  • ChrisC says:

    8 Nov8 November 16:25

    The BA rule for change of airport 300 miles or less.

    But you can only invoke the 300 mile rule for flights that have been cancelled

    • BJ says:

      8 Nov8 November 16:58

      Plus ISTR that Sann Diego and Phoenix are just over that.

  • Lady London says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:36

    2 choices : use BA’s terms including their offer of switch in destination 300 miles, if available OR invoke EU261 to choose a completely new latee date for the exact same itinerary. They don’t mix.

    Sounds like you’d be better off being nice to BA and seeing what they can do for you when they are ready. If it all falls apart there’s always the other option.

• RIchard Thomas says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:17

  Anyone know why BA have cancelled all the flights LRH to Moscow from 12 December onwards?

• BJ says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:38

  Just had an email from Hilton Honors : starting Novemberv15 all upgrades will be confirmed three days in advance. A great result for those with BFR or reward bookings.

  • Tom says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:05

    Received the same email and keen to see how/if this works for my standard reward redemption booking at WA Ras al Khaima over New Year (as diamond).

    • BJ says:

      8 Nov8 November 17:13

      I’m sure we will get an interesting picture developing as people report back over the next month or two. Good luck with yours.

    • Blenz101 says:

      8 Nov8 November 18:08

      Good luck with that. Hotel will fill up with local expats over the period.

  • PaulC says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:42

    Came on to see the comments on this. We have a stay on the 19th and 29th this month in UK so look forward to our notification of upgrades.

    • meta says:

      8 Nov8 November 18:04

      I can already tell you it won’t be as good as it sounds. If you book a base room, at most what you can expect is one category upgrade. It’s already been trialed in some hotels and my partner had a very bad experience today on a business trip. The hotel he’s staying at now is insisting that’s the new rule and you can’t be upgraded further on check-in. After a fight, the manager gave the suite. The upgrade email received Sat/Sun night. The hotel is practically empty and he’s a returning guest on top!

      Obviously this might be this particular hotel, but I am sure the hotels will try to avoid giving out more than they have to.

      • BuildBackBetter says:

        8 Nov8 November 18:25

        I guess Hilton brought it with good intention to force hotels to upgrade elites. You’ll always have hotels that try to provide the minimum possible.
        What could become a problem is elites setting an expectation that they always want something more than an automatic upgrade.

      • BJ says:

        8 Nov8 November 19:00

        IME some hotels clearly want to please their guests though. Most upgrades I’ve had have been more than one category. If anything a single category upgrade has been a disappointment. I don’t see this changing unless Hilton is pushing hard for a more consistent experience for guests. I believe the main reason we see a lot of grumbles about upgrades here on HfP and some other places is that people target the wrong hotels. They often stay in the better more popular hotels in the better locations. It should be no surprise people often drop hard cash on the best rooms and suites in these hotels and therefore great upgrade opportunities are slim. Best upgrade opportunities are in second string hotels, not at the luxury high end. Such hotels are more kijeky to have higher numbers of vacant exec rooms and suites and probably have greater incentive to drive returning business.

        • meta says:

          8 Nov8 November 19:22

          My experience is the opposite. The best Hilton upgrades I had are at the luxury end, the bigger and lower end hotels are the stingiest. The bigger and lower end hotels don’t care about returning guests as they have hordes of people filling in rooms via group bookings and will just put them in whatever room.

  • Steve says:

    8 Nov8 November 18:08

    Yeah same email, all though I think they might already be doing it without the notification anyway.
    Currently at the Doubletree Cheltenham and 3 days before my stay I could see when looking in the app under My stay section that my room had already been changed from Cosy double and was showing King deluxe with garden views. For reference I’m diamond.

    • Tariq says:

      8 Nov8 November 19:02

      I often see the same thing, even minutes after booking sometimes – a higher grade room in ‘My Stay’ than the one that I just booked…

  • Karl says:

    8 Nov8 November 18:43

    Not optimistic this is a good think. Likely to regulate the one category upgrade more strictly rather than the current situation where upgrades can range from 0 to 3-4 categories, quite often at the discretion of the receptionist.

• C says:

  8 Nov8 November 16:48

  I’m going to upgrade my BA amex to trigger the 241 (having spent over 10k) sometime between now and 31 December – any reason to do it before the IT outage this weekend rather than after? Basically I’m just overthinking – I doubt there will be any unfavorable changes as a result of the IT work, but we do plan to downgrade the card sometime next year anyway rather than cancel it

  • BJ says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:01

    If 5-6 weeks is not important to you then do it sooner than later; anything can change for any reason anytime.

  • SwissJim says:

    8 Nov8 November 17:12

    I wouldn’t rely on being able to downgrade at any point in the future….

    • Luke says:

      8 Nov8 November 20:12

      just downgraded today after upgraded a months ago for voucher, all was fine, answered by Brighton office.

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