Anything you can do when you are around 200 points short of a booking?

[Wolfgheist]

I was looking at a slightly better room since the cheap rooms are selling out in Hawaii for Christmas, but I would be around 200 points short of booking it. Any way to make up this shortage other than buying a new timeshare?

 

[mjm1]

I was looking at a slightly better room since the cheap rooms are selling out in Hawaii for Christmas, but I would be around 200 points short of booking it. Any way to make up this shortage other than buying a new timeshare?

You can borrow the needed points from the next year for free. It will ask you if you want to do that when you are making the reservation.

 

[Wolfgheist]

You can borrow the needed points from the next year for free. It will ask you if you want to do that when you are making the reservation.

I failed to mention that my timeshare is for odd years, and I have been told I cannot use points from 2027 in 2025.

 

[mjm1]

I failed to mention that my timeshare is for odd years, and I have been told I cannot use points from 2027 in 2025.

One option is to reserve one less night and then reserve the one night needed with Hilton Honors points and by credit card. Then ask the rooms coordinator to connect the two reservations and request to stay in the same unit throughout your stay. Of course, this assumes you can reserve that same type of unit for the single night. Unfortunately that doesn’t always work, especially with a nicer unit. If that fails, you would just have to switch units for one night.

Another thing to consider to avoid this situation in the future is to buy another EOY even unit, so you have points every year. Of course that only makes sense if you could make use of it.

 

[SmithOp]

To expand on @mjm1 suggestion, you could shorten by 2 nights, book those on the Hilton dot com web site, then when you reach Open Season check to see if you can get a 2 day open season reservation cheaper than the Hilton dot com reservation. If so, it's easy to cancel the hotel reservation with no penalty.

 

[Wolfgheist]

To expand on @mjm1 suggestion, you could shorten by 2 nights, book those on the Hilton dot com web site, then when you reach Open Season check to see if you can get a 2 day open season reservation cheaper than the Hilton dot com reservation. If so, it's easy to cancel the hotel reservation with no penalty.

Part of the difficulty is I am using bonus points that expire in 2 1/2 months, so I have to book what I can now, and cannot even wait for the Islander to open up. :/

 

[Guitarmom]

When we need to extend a stay by a day or so, we often find reasonable rates at Booking.com.