A simple hack that gets you more than 40% discount in India, under Hilton HHonors' Asia Pacific sale

Five days ago, we wrote about Hilton's Asia-Pacific sale that offers up to 40% discounts for stays in various participating hotels in the Asia Pacific, till 31 December 2016.

Now, with just over 2 days to go for this sale (it closes 4 April 2016), we just found some spectacular rates in India, that probably offer well over 40% discounts from standard rates, as long as you have flexibility with dates.

Normally, we'd go to the offer's landing page, which typically looks like this screenshot below.

After inputting "India" (or your other preferred search option) as the destination in the top right corner, you'd get a screen similar to this one below.

That's fine. Just remember, that the rates stated here aren't necessarily the lowest rates under this offer. In fact, these are only the lowest rates assuming a discount rate on the rack rate or the Best Available Rate. It is not even the lowest rate for the day you're searching. So don't be discouraged if any of the rates stated on this page are in excess of your personal limits / budgets.

That's because what you're really looking for, is the lowest possible rates. And just a day's change to your travel plans could get you a rate lower than what you're otherwise prepared to pay. Unfortunately, there's no direct way to access a list of rates for different dates, so here's what I stumbled upon.

For illustration's sake, I've considered the Conrad Pune in the example below, but these principles work the same way for other hotels as well.

Step 1

First, search for rates for the current date (ie the date you're doing the search on). Ensure that the special rate of 40% discount (called 40PCT OFF) is checked off on the screen.

Step 2

For most of the hotels, this will return an error, and the 40% promotion rates shows up as not available. That's exactly what you want!

Step 3

Click on the link towards the bottom of the screen, that allows you to view a list of available dates when this rate (40% discount) applies. You'll then get a list of dates when the said rate is available, along with the rates that apply on those dates, in batches of 2 weeks. You can go forward or backward by a week, to explore other possible dates and rates that work for you.

Step 4

At first, I was able to locate a rate of Rs 5,099 a night, which is a great rate as it is.

However, when I dug deeper, I got this little gem!

The Conrad Pune is actually available at Rs 4,499 a night, on certain dates! Now compare that with what you got on the landing page - Rs 5,699. The new rate is 21% lower than even the promotion rate that Hilton's promotion page displays!

Of course, the dates need to work for you, to be able to use the lower rate. However, it doesn't take much time to find out what dates (and rates) do and do not work for you, so I consider this a good dividend for the effort.

When I compared the rates available for all of Hilton India's properties, here's what I found. The rates listed on the promotion page seem to be the typical low rate. They aren't the actual low rates for given dates, nor are they the lowest rates under the promotion (which is what I think they could have used for the promotion).

The High promo rate in the above table is the typical rate that is higher than most other rates we've seen. It isn't always, however, the highest rate under the promotion.

The typical standard rate is the standard rate that you can find when you search for rates across the two-week period in Step 3 above.

So basically, if the dates work for you, then you'll be able to snag rooms at the rates mentioned under the Lowest promo rate column of the above table. As you can see, these are fantastic rates, and in virtually all but 4 cases, the discount to the standard rate is well over 40% (excluding Hampton Vadodara, which is a participating hotel for this promotion but no dates are available with the 40% discount, as far as I could tell).

So there you go! If you thought the above hack was useful, and you'd like to book with Hiltons under this promotion, we request you to consider using our affiliate link here, to make the booking. It does not add any cost to you, but helps us earn an affiliate commission, to run the blog. Thank you!

And remember, the booking deadline ends 9.30 pm India time on 4 April 2016.

Readers: Did you find this hack useful? Will you be booking with Hiltons under this promotion?