Chalk this post up to one of those irritable click-bait reads where an undeserving points churner asks a question only to garner attention.
Now that I have your attention, let me discuss the real reason for this post: caveat emptor.
I originally booked two nights at the Hilton Bora Bora and two nights at the Intercontinental Bora Bora for end of January. Obviously, I did not get to go on the trip. I explained the complications for trying to cancel the Hilton reservation where 190,000 HHonors points were forfeited because the system didn’t process my cancellation.
Call after call to customer service, hang up and try and try again, yielded nothing. Finally I wrote a letter to the hotel personally and followed up today by calling HHonors guest services. Someone reasonable came on the line and emailed me a confirmation that my points would be refunded. Independently, the hotel also emailed to apologize and also processed the refund.
The whole set of circumstances had me nauseous. Could you imagine losing 2 nights in Tahiti because you assumed that the refund would eventually go through? I’ve booked many hotels on Hilton and have run into this technical glitch but eventually it corrected itself. Although this goes without saying, going forward I will be more paranoid of taking screenshots, double checking for cancellation emails, and writing down record locator numbers. The laziness from not doing so isn’t worth all the stress.
Now that the trip is delayed, I will be using the bird to get me two anniversary nights from my Citi Reserve cards. That along with another 95k HHonors already in my account + IHG gives me the option of living in French Polynesia for 7 nights.
That just seems too long but at least I have that option.
Yours truly,
The spoiled, grateful, careless points blogger
Are you planning on spending the whole time on Tahiti or splitting it with Bora Bora? You seem to refer to the 2 islands interchangeably. I am in the process of booking a trip there myself. If you are splitting the stay, then 7 nights is not too much.
I changed the conclusion to French Polynesia. The point if the article wasn’t about length but about almost losing out on the whole trip.
If I were to go I’d probably do PPT one night, a few in Moorea, and Bora Bora. But Tahiti in the subject line is a bit sexier than saying all that.