50,000 Hhonors Points for 2 Hr Timeshare Meeting

Won’t Run and I spent a night at the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel last week on a $47 rate, thanks to Extreme Hotel Deals! (review to be published soon).

In the hotel lobby, we stopped by the Hilton Grand Vacations desk (the name for Hilton’s timeshare division) because I had received an email from Hilton promising 500 points: “Thank you for selecting Hilton New York for your New York travel. As our way of saying “thanks,” we’d like to offer you500 Hilton HHonors™ Bonus Pointsjust for stopping by the Hilton Grand Vacations Welcome Desk after you check in.”)

The representative, June, asked whether we’d like to attend a Hilton Club (the name given to the New York Hilton Grand Vacations property) meeting. We listened to what she had to offer.

We were promised a non-pressure meeting of about 90 minutes, in return for which we could receive our choice of the following:

What the hell, Won’t Run and I decided to sign up. We scheduled a meeting for 1 p.m. on Saturday. The information packet contained this statement:

Absolutely no pressure…. hmmm. We’ll see.

We went to the Hilton Grand Vacations sales office at the 45th floor of the hotel. In a few minutes time, the sales agent, Maureen, came over, introduced herself, and talked about “us” and “our travels” and “our travel goals.”

She then brought us to a wall of photos, telling us the history of Hilton Hotels and showing us photos of some of the Hilton Club properties. We then went upstairs to her office space and were seated there. The views of Manhattan and Central Park were fabulous.

At this point, Maureen really went to work. She didn’t get to the real numbers until the last step. Her sales pitch was smooth and quite convincing. By the time she got to real numbers, the prices did not seem all that crazy, and of course, there were incentives for signing up right there and then. When she saw we weren’t signing up there and then, she excused herself, and another sales agent stopped by with one last pitch. We said we were not ready to make any decisions that day.

In all, we were there about 2 hours (about 30 minutes longer than promised). I wouldn’t say that the meeting was absolutely “no pressure,” but it was interesting and we weren’t told the sale’s rep children couldn’t eat if she didn’t make the sale as we’d once been told at a time share meeting in Belize (the only other time share meeting we’d ever attended before).

We were then escorted to this desk, where the agent took our information, and we each told him that we’d chosen to receive the 25,000 Hhonors points option for attending the meeting.  He said the points would be in our account in a week or two.

And, within two days, the 25,000 Hhonors points appeared in my account.

If you are thinking about attending a meeting at the New York Hilton, here are some pointers:

1. It appears that anyone can stop by the Hilton Grand Vacations desk in the hotel lobby.
2. Hilton is particularly interested in those who already have Hhonors status to attend these meetings.
3. You are expected to go in with an open mind and listen to what the agent has to say.
4. You cannot be a resident of New York City (including all 5 boroughs) to attend a meeting, but Long Island or Westchester, etc. are fine. You need not give any proof of such residence.
5. Two people who live at one address will only be eligible for one “gift” for attending a meeting.
6. The appointments all seemed to be between the hours of 9 am and 1 pm. There were appointments available the same day we stopped by the desk. We were also told that, if we wanted, we could have breakfast or lunch too.

It was an interesting way to spend a Saturday afternoon and I actually learned a lot about the topic.