Hilton hotel category changes announced, doesn't affect India

Hilton HHonors has announced changes to categories for some of its hotels, which will take effect 12 October 2016. The good news is that this doesn't affect any of their India hotels. That said, some of their changes are interesting. Let's take a look.

First, here is Hilton's page with all the changes - new hotels added, category increases and category reductions.

• 70 new hotels have been added, with 51 of those in the USA.
• 33 hotels see a category reduction, 26 of which are in Turkey. The latter is reflective of the prevailing environment in that country.
• 21 hotels see a category increase, 15 of which are in the USA.

The last time Hilton announced changes was in July this year. 

Hilton Mumbai

With over 4500 properties in its portfolio, the changes in categories (to a total of 54 hotels) is just over 1% of the total number of hotels, which isn't significant on the whole. What's key is Hilton HHonors' award chart showing points required for an award night for various hotel categories:

You'll notice that for category 4 onwards, there's a range of points for an award night. This by itself provides HHonors the flexibility to charge fewer or more points for an award night, which in turn reduces the need for category changes at those levels. Put in perspective of the current set of changes, of the 21 category increases, only 13 affect hotels in category 4 or higher, which is an insignificant number of changes.

Conclusion

First off, I'm glad that there are no category changes - particularly increases - affecting India. Secondly, as I mentioned earlier, we're seeing fewer actual category changes due to the range in points require for an award night, which allows HHonors to be flexible and price its hotels dynamically. With different parts of the world behaving differently - economically and politically - I expect we'll be seeing more of these changes each quarter.