HGVC Account Activated - Any Tips?

[JIMinNC]

We're now officially HGVC owners, as we were able to activate our online account this morning for our new 7000 point HGVC Sea World. I've already been online browsing a bit at future availability.

We're very experienced with Marriott's system, but this is our initial intro to HGVC, so I wanted to see if there're any important tips the more experienced users here have that a new HGVC owner should know:

1) Thanks to reading this board, I think I'm already reasonably well-educated on the basics of things like booking windows, Club Season, saving/borrowing, etc., and the system seems reasonably straight forward. So, what I'm looking for are any more specific techniques and tips on how to get the most out of the booking system and the overall program that you only learn from experience. Any valuable tips I need to know on how to maximize what I can do with the HGVC booking system/process? Any "gotchas" to be careful with or look out for?

2) The Welcome Email made it sound like we would be receiving new Hilton Honors numbers from Hilton Worldwide, but my wife and I both already have HHonors numbers. I talked to Customer Service this morning and they directed me to the "Hilton Honors Mutual Fund/Merge Account Application" but that looks like it is for account merging, not just linking one of our existing Honors accounts to our HGVC account. How have others here managed their Existing Hilton Honors accounts with their HGVC ownership?

 

[Mosescan]

Realize that the conversion fee to convert HGVC points to HH points is the same regardless of how many points you want to convert and the same for saving points into next year. One of the actual useful tips I got from an owners update is to try and always be working off of next years points so as to avoid fees. So for you starting out I would use your 2018 points for this year and in December convert all of your 2019 points to HH points. This will give you 175000 HH points or enough for 3-6 nights in a hotel depending on point values needed. Then in 2019 you will be using 2020 points. If you get to the end of the year and you still have a few points left then you don't have to pay to rescue them as they are next years points. This will obviously depend on your vacation habits. If you are going to use all your points and then a few more from next year each year then this will not be an issue. There is nothing worse than having 1000 points left in you account at the end of the year and having to pay $100 to rescue them!

The other key I have found is that points are power! What I mean by this is that the more points you have, the more flexible you can be and the easier it is to book closer to your travel time. Last year when I only had 5000 points I booked HHV 6 weeks out for March break 2 weeks. We ended up staying in 5 different rooms in 2 weeks and having to use open season cash for 5 of the 13 nights. In the end we still got a vacation but moving rooms that much was a pain in the butt! This year, having 24200 points I could book it even now and find rooms to stay in. The lower point rooms all go first as you can imagine as people want to stretch their points as far as possible. There is lots of availability still but in the towers with the higher point value rooms. My goal for increasing my points was to be able to book a 2 BR during platinum wherever/whenever I wanted.

When you look for availability and see the time you want in the unit you want but there is a 1 or 2 day gap of unavailability in the middle you can use your HH points to stay in a hotel for the middle days to bridge the gap and still get your vacation. It will just mean moving a couple of times. At HHV in Waikiki it is all one complex so not too much of a pain.

HH silver status means that if you book a 5 night stay on HH points you only have to pay for 4 nights and get the 5th free. This is great for booking a city break vacation where there is no HGVC property.

Enjoy and welcome to HGVC

 

[Cyberc]

Welcome to the club.

Just want to point out that converting to HH is never a good use of points.

 

[hurnik]

Welcome to HGVC. haha

If you have 2018 points, you should have some time to use them. If you *know* you're not going to use them this year, I'd suggest taking a gander at the RCI resorts as you can book stuff in advance with RCI and they'll pull your 2018 points. If you're not really sure, you can pay a fee to deposit some (or all, not sure if it's required to be all) the 2018 points into RCI which will give you 2 more years to use them.

You could alternatively "save" them into 2019 for booking HGVC if you know you're going to use them in 2019, but then you'll end up with 14,000 points to use. But maybe that's what you are planning.

As others have said, it's usually better to be in a "borrow" state (ie, use your 2018 points up and then you can always borrow 2019 points if you need to). That way you're not rushing to try to use them or deposit/save them.

But it really depends on what your travel plans are.

I tend to book/think ahead at least 9 months, but mostly for budgeting purposes.

Feel free to ask/post as many questions as you need to.

 

[Talent312]

Merging your existing HHonors Accounts with the new HHonors Account --

As new owners, you will likely be given one new HHonors account # for you both (not 2 new numbers). That's becuz it's a joint account (unique in the HHonors system). You and your wife can add your individual HH points to the new account by completing the merger form for each of your accounts. You are, of course, free to maintain separate accounts, but it's far easier to attain upper tiers with a joint account.

Note 1: If HGVC was given an existing HH account # when your HGVC account was created, they will use that # for the new joint account, and only one separate account will remain.

Note 2: Even though it is a joint account, only one of you is listed as the "primary user" and bookings made with that account only has that person's name. So, if the co-owner wants to check-in, they'll need to be listed as a "guest." -- We learned this trick when I booked a room for my DW to use with "our" HH-account.

Note 3. You can greatly enhance your HHonors point accumulation with a HHonors CC from CitiBank or American Express. But frankly, given recent reductions in the value of HH-points, there are better travel CC's out there.

.

 

[1Kflyerguy]

Welcome to the club.

I will second what Talent312 said, the HHonors mutual account a nice perk, and great way to have a single larger pool of points. Plus each partners stays count towards elite. Unlike Marriott, HGVC stays won't generate any points or night credit other than points from a Hilton credit card.

The other difference from Marriott is that with HGVC is pretty easy to change a reservation online, so the idea of walking a reservation works well.

 

[SmithOp]

Never cancel a reservation inside 30 days, you lose the reservation fee and a varying percentage of your points. If you have to cancel, change the reservation first and move it out past the 30 day window, it can be any other resort or room size. Now its out past 30 days you can cancel and only lose the reservation fee, keep all the points. Better yet, use the fee you already paid to book a new stay that you can use. HGVC changeable online reservations are very powerful.


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[JIMinNC]

Merging your existing HHonors Accounts with the new HHonors Account --

As new owners, you will likely be given one new HHonors account # for you both (not 2 new numbers). That's becuz it's a joint account (unique in the HHonors system). You and your wife can add your individual HH points to the new account by completing the merger form for each of your accounts. You are, of course, free to maintain separate accounts, but it's far easier to attain upper tiers with a joint account.

Note 1: If HGVC was given an existing HH account # when your HGVC account was created, they will use that # for the new joint account, and only one separate account will remain.

Note 2: Even though it is a joint account, only one of you is listed as the "primary user" and bookings made with that account only has that person's name. So, if the co-owner wants to check-in, they'll need to be listed as a "guest." -- We learned this trick when I booked a room for my DW to use with "our" HH-account.

Note 3. You can greatly enhance your HHonors point accumulation with a HHonors CC from CitiBank or American Express. But frankly, given recent reductions in the value of HH-points, there are better travel CC's out there.

.

Welcome to the club.

I will second what Talent312 said, the HHonors mutual account a nice perk, and great way to have a single larger pool of points. Plus each partners stays count towards elite. Unlike Marriott, HGVC stays won't generate any points or night credit other than points from a Hilton credit card.

The other difference from Marriott is that with HGVC is pretty easy to change a reservation online, so the idea of walking a reservation works well.

Thanks so much for the explanation. I was a bit confused by the way they do HHonors for HGVC.

We didn't provide an HHonors number to the closing company, so unless they do some sort of a name/address match against their HHonors database, it sounds like we'll get a new joint number that we can both merge into. The only issue may be that it looks like I'm listed as the primary name on our HGVC account, so if that means the joint HHonors account would have me as primary, that creates a problem for my wife since she is the most frequent business traveler right now and probably wouldn't want to be listed as my "guest" on her business trips. We may have to just merge my account with the joint account for now and then merge hers in a year or two when she fully retires. Since I doubt we'll be converting any of our HGVC points to Honors points any time soon (or ever), and since HGVC stays don't generate points or night credit, it doesn't sound like that would be a big deal. Is that correct thinking?

 

[JIMinNC]

Never cancel a reservation inside 30 days, you lose the reservation fee and a varying percentage of your points. If you have to cancel, change the reservation first and move it out past the 30 day window, it can be any other resort or room size. Now its out past 30 days you can cancel and only lose the reservation fee, keep all the points. Better yet, use the fee you already paid to book a new stay that you can use. HGVC changeable online reservations are very powerful.


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That's a great tip. Thanks!

 

[JIMinNC]

Welcome to HGVC. haha

If you have 2018 points, you should have some time to use them. If you *know* you're not going to use them this year, I'd suggest taking a gander at the RCI resorts as you can book stuff in advance with RCI and they'll pull your 2018 points. If you're not really sure, you can pay a fee to deposit some (or all, not sure if it's required to be all) the 2018 points into RCI which will give you 2 more years to use them.

You could alternatively "save" them into 2019 for booking HGVC if you know you're going to use them in 2019, but then you'll end up with 14,000 points to use. But maybe that's what you are planning.

As others have said, it's usually better to be in a "borrow" state (ie, use your 2018 points up and then you can always borrow 2019 points if you need to). That way you're not rushing to try to use them or deposit/save them.

But it really depends on what your travel plans are.

I tend to book/think ahead at least 9 months, but mostly for budgeting purposes.

Feel free to ask/post as many questions as you need to.

We're not big fans of RCI resorts. We've been a member since 1999 with a previous ownership that we've now sold, but still have 51 unused RCI TPUs. We are hoping to use most of them to book HGVC on the Big Island through our old RCI account when HGVC does their 2019 bulk bank in a month or two. Hopefully that will go a long way toward clearing out that account so we can get rid of it, since we now have the Hilton corporate RCI portal if we ever need to use RCI.

We do have 7000 HGVC points for 2018, and as you can see from my signature, our 2018 travel schedule is already pretty full. So, I suspect we'll wind up saving some or even all of those points into 2019 since we'll have more usage opportunities there. Having said that, I do plan to follow your and Mosescan's advice and try to avoid having to save points in the future. We just may not be able to avoid it this year. If we can't get the Big Island reservations we need from the HGVC RCI bulk bank, we'll need to use our HGVC points to book that, so having some saved points from 2018 could come in handy. If we get the RCI booking, then we may use some of our 2018 points for a long weekend somewhere and then save the rest into 2019.

 

[Sky313]

We're not big fans of RCI resorts. We've been a member since 1999 with a previous ownership that we've now sold, but still have 51 unused RCI TPUs. We are hoping to use most of them to book HGVC on the Big Island through our old RCI account when HGVC does their 2019 bulk bank in a month or two. Hopefully that will go a long way toward clearing out that account so we can get rid of it, since we now have the Hilton corporate RCI portal if we ever need to use RCI.

We do have 7000 HGVC points for 2018, and as you can see from my signature, our 2018 travel schedule is already pretty full. So, I suspect we'll wind up saving some or even all of those points into 2019 since we'll have more usage opportunities there. Having said that, I do plan to follow your and Mosescan's advice and try to avoid having to save points in the future. We just may not be able to avoid it this year. If we can't get the Big Island reservations we need from the HGVC RCI bulk bank, we'll need to use our HGVC points to book that, so having some saved points from 2018 could come in handy. If we get the RCI booking, then we may use some of our 2018 points for a long weekend somewhere and then save the rest into 2019.

The big Island has been one of our favorite places to visit with HGVC. You may want to read about the different properties at big Island though. Kingsland (phase 1, 2, and 3 are different), as well as the Kohala Suites and Bay club. If it was my first time going to the big island and if you have kids, recommend the Kingsland option which gives you access to the Kingsland pools and the Hilton Waikoloa resort.

 

[JIMinNC]

The big Island has been one of our favorite places to visit with HGVC. You may want to read about the different properties at big Island though. Kingsland (phase 1, 2, and 3 are different), as well as the Kohala Suites and Bay club. If it was my first time going to the big island and if you have kids, recommend the Kingsland option which gives you access to the Kingsland pools and the Hilton Waikoloa resort.

We've stayed at Kohala Suites three times on RCI exchanges and a VIP package bought during a sales presentation years ago, so we know that one well. We've toured Kingsland and the Bay Club, but never stayed there. In fact, even though we are just now becoming HGVC owners, we've stayed at HGVC properties quite a bit over the years through RCI and promo packages - three times at Kohala Suites, three times at Tuscany Village/Orlando, once at Sea World/Orlando, once at Grand Pacific Palisades, and just last fall, a cash stay at Ocean Oak in Hilton Head when Marriott cancelled our reservation at Grande Ocean after Hurricane Irma.

We're basically empty nesters - our daughter is 19 and in college and our son is almost 23 and in his first job - so no need for Kings Land's kiddie-friendly features. Depending on how the trip shapes up, they might join us on one island (if our daughter decides she's OK spending her spring break 2019 traveling with her parents), but it's hard to get Millennials to plan 12 or 13 months out. So, if we decide it'll just be the two of us on the Big Island, we'll be looking at Bay Club or Kings Land for the 1BR units since Kohala is all 2BR.

 

[Cyberc]

Never cancel a reservation inside 30 days, you lose the reservation fee and a varying percentage of your points. If you have to cancel, change the reservation first and move it out past the 30 day window, it can be any other resort or room size. Now its out past 30 days you can cancel and only lose the reservation fee, keep all the points. Better yet, use the fee you already paid to book a new stay that you can use. HGVC changeable online reservations are very powerful.


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In addition to SmithOp post I can add that never(almost) buy the "insurance" to protect your vacation points as you always have this option - Unless you are planning to go end of year then the insurance could be an option to save guard your points.

On another note, IF/When you change a reservation you can't move/change it beyond the year its made, so a reservation for 2018 can't be modified to anytime in 2019.

 

[1Kflyerguy]

Thanks so much for the explanation. I was a bit confused by the way they do HHonors for HGVC.

We didn't provide an HHonors number to the closing company, so unless they do some sort of a name/address match against their HHonors database, it sounds like we'll get a new joint number that we can both merge into. The only issue may be that it looks like I'm listed as the primary name on our HGVC account, so if that means the joint HHonors account would have me as primary, that creates a problem for my wife since she is the most frequent business traveler right now and probably wouldn't want to be listed as my "guest" on her business trips. We may have to just merge my account with the joint account for now and then merge hers in a year or two when she fully retires. Since I doubt we'll be converting any of our HGVC points to Honors points any time soon (or ever), and since HGVC stays don't generate points or night credit, it doesn't sound like that would be a big deal. Is that correct thinking?

I don't recall having trouble with my wife checking in before, but she only occasionally travels without me.. So perhaps we got lucky. I agree having to add a frequent travel traveler as guest with any regularity sounds like a hassle.

Personally, i would try to link your HGVC account to one of your existing accounts, just to avoid creating a "extra" account, but perhaps i am just compulsive.. At my work, my team ends cleaning up multiple customer accounts, so its kind of a sore point for me...

Officially the Hilton HHonors status does not matter with HGVC, that said as Hilton Diamond the front desk people often mention my status, and imply that i am somehow getting a better room assignment or something. Not sure that i really do, but maybe a better building or location within the same category i booked...

 

[Denise L]

We just joined HGVC recently . I think that they merged our HH accounts and my husband is listed as the primary and I am the guest. However, when I book a HGVC or RCI reservation, both of our names appear on the confirmation, so I will be able to check in without any hassle (I hope, haven't tried this yet since just started booking with the points). Regarding our HH account, so you suppose I should call and find out whose number it is, or does that show up somewhere online?

 

[JIMinNC]

We just joined HGVC recently . I think that they merged our HH accounts and my husband is listed as the primary and I am the guest. However, when I book a HGVC or RCI reservation, both of our names appear on the confirmation, so I will be able to check in without any hassle (I hope, haven't tried this yet since just started booking with the points). Regarding our HH account, so you suppose I should call and find out whose number it is, or does that show up somewhere online?

I don't think the issue is triggered when either of you are checking into HGVC or RCI. In both of those cases, you would be using your HGVC ownership, which clearly includes both names.

The issue that I was addressing with regards to my wife would be triggered when she was trying to check-in to a Hilton Hotel on business. If my wife's HHonors account were merged with a joint account where I'm listed as primary, then as I understand what was posted above, my name would have to be on every one of her business travel reservations. She travels Monday through Thursday every week, so that would be a big hassle for her, and not sure how that would work with her expense reimbursement requests to her employer if the reservation were in my name. Seems like we should keep her HHonors separate until she retires. So our situation is different than what you describe.

 

[Talent312]

.... She travels Monday through Thursday every week, so that would be a big hassle for her, and not sure how that would work with her expense reimbursement requests to her employer if the reservation were in my name. Seems like we should keep her HHonors separate until she retires. So our situation is different than what you describe.

I'd think she'd be reimbursed with a receipt showing she paid for the room.
But why create an issued if you don't have to? I concur with your approach.

We thought about not using a HH# for the booking, but decided just to add
DW's name as a "guest" so she could check herself in.

.