How Does Hilton’s ‘Guaranteed Connecting Hotel Rooms’ Feature Work?
•February 20, 2026
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Companies Mentioned
Why It Matters
The tool drives higher‑margin direct bookings and gives Hilton a clear competitive edge in the family‑travel segment.
Key Takeaways
- •Hilton now offers guaranteed connecting rooms via its website.
- •Select “two rooms” and book at least three days ahead.
- •Some properties add a small cash surcharge for connecting rooms.
- •Points rates stay the same, only cash prices may increase.
- •Feature pushes guests to book direct, reducing OTA commissions.
Pulse Analysis
Connecting rooms have long been a pain point for families and groups, often requiring phone calls or agent intervention to secure adjacent spaces. Hilton’s answer—an integrated IT solution first piloted with its Motto brand—automates the process, letting travelers see only room types that can be linked. By embedding the option into the standard booking flow, Hilton eliminates the guesswork that plagued even luxury properties, turning a logistical headache into a seamless online experience.
The user journey is straightforward: choose the “two rooms” option, ensure the stay is booked at least three days ahead, and the platform automatically excludes non‑adjacent inventory. Most hotels display a checkbox that, when selected, filters the list to connectable rooms. A modest cash premium—often around £7 per room—applies at select locations, yet points‑based pricing remains untouched, preserving value for loyalty members. This pricing nuance encourages cash‑paying guests to consider the added convenience while protecting the perceived worth of Hilton Honors points.
From a business perspective, the feature nudges travelers toward direct bookings, sidestepping high OTA commissions and strengthening Hilton’s data ownership. It also creates a differentiator in a crowded market where competitors still rely on manual coordination for adjoining rooms. As the hospitality industry leans more on digital self‑service, Hilton’s connecting‑room tool positions the brand as an innovator, likely prompting other chains to develop similar capabilities to retain group‑travel clientele.
How does Hilton’s ‘guaranteed connecting hotel rooms’ feature work?
The inability to guarantee connecting hotel rooms has been a MASSIVE bug bear of mine. It is no longer such a big issue as our children get older and can look after themselves, but we struggled with it for years.
Is it really so difficult to guarantee connecting rooms? It seems so. Whilst an airline can happily run a seating map for every single flight for the next year, it appears that hotels cannot run forward room plans. They can sell a certain number of rooms per night in each category but are incapable of doing much else.
It isn’t just budget and mid-range hotels which struggle with this. In my experience, you are just as likely to have trouble at five star properties.
One of the biggest benefits of working with Emyr Thomas at Bon Vivant to book hotels for my personal stays is that he will, if we have requested connecting rooms, call his contact at the hotel on the day of arrival. Hotels don’t like annoying Virtuoso agents because of the profile of their client base, so it gets done. (This isn’t special treatment for me, by the way. He will do it on your bookings too.)
Hilton has pulled off the necessary IT investment, and you can book connecting rooms at many hotels via the website.
How do Hilton’s connecting rooms work?
The trigger for launching this was Hilton’s new Motto chain. This is a budget brand which “offers an expanded connecting room concept where guests have the ability to book up to nine unique connecting room configurations with adaptable furniture and modern design to create the ideal accommodation and social environment for group travel.”
Once Hilton was forced to develop the necessary IT to link rooms together for Motto to work, it was relatively simple to roll it out chainwide for bog-standard pairs of connecting rooms.
This is how it works. Make sure that you select ‘two rooms’ in the hilton.com booking system and then proceed to book as usual.
You need to book at least three days in advance to take advantage of guaranteed connecting rooms. You can book for cash or points.
When you select your chosen hotel from the various options, you will see a little box you can tick:
If you don’t see this, your hotel is not offering the service.
Tick the box and it will remove room types which cannot be connected:
You can then go ahead and complete the booking as you usually would, selecting from those room options which can connect.
Where’s the catch?
There is a small catch.
Offering guaranteed connecting rooms is beneficial for Hilton for two reasons:
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you need to book direct, not via an online travel agent which charges the hotel a high commission
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it gives Hilton a competitive advantage over competing chains
Despite this, Hilton has decided to cash in by adding a price premium if you choose connecting rooms. It’s not huge (£7 per room in my example) but it is there. Not all hotels necessarily add a premium but some do, including Hampton London Stansted Airport which is the one I used above.
Oddly, points pricing remains unchanged when booking connecting rooms. It is only cash rates which can creep up.
You can find out more about connecting rooms on this special page of the Hilton website.
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