Question of the Day - 02 August 2019

Excellent question and astute observation. 

The Hilton's Price Match Guarantee program has actually been in effect for a couple of years. The way it works, or is supposed to work, is that if you find a lower qualified price on another website, Hilton will match it and give you 25% off of that stay. 

It sounds good in theory, but the devil, as usual, is in the details and there are a lot of those.

First of all, you have to submit your "claim" within 24 hours of booking your Hilton reservation; the name on the reservation must be the same as on the claim; you can send an email for a promised response in 24 hours, but you have to call for claims without a reservation confirmation number and/or for claims submitted the day before or after arrival.

In addition, the lower "qualified" price must be on a site other than an official Hilton booking channel and for the exact same accommodations and terms as on the Hilton site (if you booked two queens and the lower price is for a king, tough luck); it can't be at a different hotel, or for a room with a different view, amenities, check-in/out dates, number of guests, etc. The lower price must be lower by 1% or more and must be viewable and bookable by anyone (no points, club, or reward deals). Finally, Hilton can deny claims if it concludes that the Price Match Guarantee is being intentionally abused or manipulated to circumvent its intent.

Sorry if the foregoing has been distinctly boring, but the Price Match Guarantee program is actually a streamlined version of the Best Price program that it replaced. 

Now for the fun part. In the reviews we've seen, the program is pretty roundly panned for the following problems.

The reservations agent can't "pull up" the lower price; the agent only sees the same price as the hotel is charging.

Or the agent reads from a double-speak script until you give up out of utter frustration.

Similarly, the email responses are computer-generated and don't address the claims form or whatever issue is brought up in the email.

In short, all the Weaseling, with a capital "W," you might expect from a big company that doesn't really want to fulfill a promotion. 

We did see one success story (and a similar strong suggestion from someone who works for Hilton): Talk to the specific hotel directly. You can ask for the in-house reservations agents (usually only during business hours) or request to speak to the front-office supervisor. You'll have better success going directly to the property itself than through the corporate systems.  

But here's the crux of the situation and, hopefully, the answer to your question. There's no doubt that the hotels want you to book direct. That's definitely the purpose of the Price Match Guarantee. Whatever discount you manage to wrest from someone at Hilton, it's what they'd pay to the online travel agent anyway and they can promote to you as a customer directly in the future.

For your part, booking direct gets you the brand's reward points and elite benefits. In addition, booking direct removes the risk involved in third-party transactions; hotels are known to overbook, then cancel third-party reservations, bouncing the problem back to Travelocity, Expedia, etc., which in our experience turns right around and blames the hotel, leaving you in the middle without a room.  

Finally, we can't vouch for this, but in our research, we saw no mention of resort fees or parking charges. Given all the fine print to the  Price Match program, we strongly suspect that both are outside the purview of the deal. In other words, you pay.