Booking Hawaii: Part 3 – Hilton Hawaiian Village and Tending Reservations
Also see:
Booking Hawaii: Part 1 – Flights for 4 to Honolulu
Booking Hawaii: Part 2 – Using Citi ThankYou Points for Award Flights on Delta and United
TripBAM Monitors Your Paid Hotel Rates & Alerts You If the Price Drops
I’ll go ahead and tell you the moral of this story: tend to your reservations.
After booking 4 flights to Honolulu, then adding my little brother into the mix, the final piece of the puzzle was to book the hotel rooms.
Step 1: The paid stay
Link: Hilton Hawaiian Village
When I visited Hawaii in 2013, my main takeaway was how much I’d like to go back to the Hilton Hawaiian Village and sit on my butt for a solid week. Poetic, right?
Yes, Maui was fun, and I loved the topography of the volcanic Big Island, but I’ll be damned if I didn’t love being in that resort. As schmaltzy, white-bread, and basic as it sounds.
Just, yeah, gimme that!
My mom hasn’t traveled much. She’s barely flown. I asked if she wanted to island hop a bit, but she said she’d rather get to one spot in Hawaii and take it all in. Of course I knew just the spot…
Her husband (my stepdad) has limited vacation days, so she said they could stay 4 nights.
4 nights? Ding ding ding – Citi Prestige.
I decided to put my name on the room, add my Mom as a guest, and book it with Citi Concierge.
~$910 for 4 nights in Hawaii
That’s about ~$228 per night. Not bad, considering I’ll also earn a boatload of Hilton points, hopefully score an upgrade for them, and get a $20 dining credit each day I’m there (for being Diamond).
I immediately plugged the confirmation number into TripBam and settled into the knowledge that Hilton would probably have a sale at some point between booking and arrival.
(Here’s my write-up on TripBam.)
Sure enough, the rack rate fell to ~$200 per night.
Love it when rates fall
So I called Hilton and had them apply my new room rate to the same confirmation number. This is key.
Because all Citi sees is the confirmation number. And they have no idea what portion of the final charge is for the room and what’s for food and drinks. And I’m sure I’ll be adding plenty of Mai Thais to the rooms. 
