Smoking at Hiltons ?
One thing I read is that Starwood / Westin and Marriott have banned smoking at their hotels, and Hilton is dragging behind, leaving 1-10% of room available to smokers. As a property manager, I hate finding cigarette burns in carpet - next week replacing an entire hallway in building in San Francisco due to cigarette burns - Yes, all building leases read no smoking.
Think that allowing smoking in buildings and hotels hurts value. But still Hilton seems to have such a user friendly system for booking (not set by week for example), except don't like all the nickel & diming fees that DVC doesn't charge - we own Disney Vacation Club points as our only current pre-paid vacation plan and have realized huge savings already by using it.
Our destinations really are usually international metropolitan cities. This can be tricky with a family. My husband gets asked to speak at conferences around the world, and as a family, we would like to tag along and have THREE beds to sleep everyone, plus a living area and kitchen. These conference destinations are usually NOT golf, beach, ski resorts, but are usually major international cities. My thought was that I can use the Hilton TS points transferred into regular Hilton resorts that are in the cities when necessary, when a "home-like" resort is not available and then just book 2 rooms as needed, or a combination, ie few days in regular Hilton, then resort Hilton somewhere outside of city. Normally we pay $3000 to rent a condo for a week in cities such as Montreal last year, but think that owning a TS purchased on resale market would certainly save us money in long run since MF around $700-$1400 is what I am seeing for 1 week use for 2BR timeshares per year, plus can tax deduct a portion that applies to property taxes helping a lot. My husband is paid for if he stays in conference hotel in regular room, but they don't pay for entire family. Conference opportunity is coming up in Kyoto Japan but see only Marriott has presence there, but not Hilton that only has location in Osaka, an hour away. So far we've been to Montreal, Paris, Koln, Amsterdam for conferences, and have missed opportunities for several locations in China and Hawaii where he was invited. We normally have 11-12 months notice as to the next years conference locations.
I wonder if Marriott may upgrade their system to a more flexible point system that transfers out when needed to their other hotels. That would be nice. In the meantime, Hilton still looking more appealing. I'm thinking of purchasing the NYC Hilton Club, since we would use that hotel when visiting - almost impossible to stay there if don't own there - I used to live down the street from there so know the hotel pretty well. Other thought is to buy Las Vegas Flamingo Hilton (also love to go there for vacations) where the maintenance fees are about half of the NYC Hilton Club. We were always partial to Hilton Hampton suites when traveling, but those are too small for us now.
Still does anyone know if Hilton is to ban smoking? I really am on board with the smoking bans.
