If you’re looking to book a Hilton Grand Vacations reservation for a highly sought-after HGV resort, or during a peak time that has historically been difficult to book, you’ve come to the right place! In this article, we’ll outline everything you need to know about “walking” an HGV reservation, from what it is to step-by-step instructions on how to walk an upcoming Hilton Grand Vacations reservation.
We’ll also answer some common questions about “walking” an HGV reservation so that you can feel confident in making your booking. Let’s get started!
What Is “Walking” A Reservation?
Walking a reservation is the process of booking a Club Season reservation, generally starting before your actual desired check-in date, exactly 9 months in advance (or when Club Season reservations are first available for your desired resort).
Then each day, as the Club Season booking window moves forward in time, allowing you to book the next day, you modify your HGV reservation in order to move, or “walk”, the reservation by 1 day until you have booked the reservation for your desired check-in date.
Once you have achieved your desired check-in date, you can then add additional days to the reservation to book your desired check-out date.
Why Is This Method Effective At Booking Hard To Get Reservations?
This booking method takes advantage of two very important rules of the HGV reservation booking system: the club season booking window, and the minimum number of nights owners are allowed to book. Let us explain:
The Club Season Booking Window
The Club Season booking window begins up to 9 months prior to check-out for many HGV resorts. Some resorts have specialized booking windows, but you can get easy-to-read color-coded charts for each resort by reading our HGV Booking Windows article.
At midnight (eastern time) each night, the next day of inventory is released into the booking system.
Minimum # Of Nights For Reservation
Many HGV resorts require owners to book a minimum of a 3-night stay when in Club Season.
By making a reservation on the latest day that is currently available for the Club Season booking window, you are one of the limited few who can get the next available day, once the inventory opens up at midnight.
If you don’t have an existing reservation for a fully booked up resort, date, and unit type, it is impossible to book the next day at midnight when the inventory refreshes due to the minimum 3-night reservation requirement.
If this sounds confusing at first glance, don’t worry, we will show you this in action with the example below.
How To “Walk” An HGV Reservation: Step-By-Step Example
In this example, we will be booking 9 months in advance, during the Club Season booking window, at Kalia Suites, a Hilton Grand Vacations Resort in the Hilton Hawaiian Village. We’ll be focusing on booking a 1 bedroom villa for this example, but you can apply this method to any hard-to-book resort, date, or unit type in the HGV booking system.
Notice the 3-night gap in the availability for all of the 1 bedroom units (1BR & 1DR). Also, take note of the 2-night gap in the availability for the 1 bedroom plus (1DP) room type, we will use this to illustrate why walking a reservation is such an effective method later in the article.
All of these nights are more than likely taken by HGV owners who are walking reservations. You won’t be the only one!
The Club Season Booking Window
In this example, if we move our desired check-out date by one day, you can see the booking system will not allow us to book the next night.
Once midnight comes, the next day of inventory will be available for booking, but what happens when that next day opens up, and there are no available dates preceding it, to allow for the 3-night minimum to be satisfied?
Minimum # Of Nights For Reservation
Now, we’d like to reference that 1 bedroom plus (1DP) we mentioned earlier in the article. You can see in the figure below, there is one night available, but in order to book it, there would need to be 2 additional nights available, directly preceding the currently available night, to satisfy the 3-night booking minimum.
This effectively prevents owners who do not already have a reservation, for 3 or more nights for the preceding nights, from booking the latest night that will be released at midnight.
Walking Reservations: A Controversial Topic
Hopefully, now you can see why walking a reservation in the HGV booking system can be extremely effective for booking even the most hard-to-get reservations. In fact, this method is so effective that many owners see this method as a controversial way of booking reservations that locks other owners out of inventory and takes advantage of the rules that Hilton has created for their booking system.
We will leave this judgment to you, but here at SellingTimeshares.Net, we are all about educating our clients about how to use their timeshares to their highest and best ability possible. We believe you should at least know that this method exists.
Learn More About Hilton Grand Vacations Timeshares
If you’re looking into buying a Hilton resale, and have any questions about how to best use a Hilton Grand Vacations ownership feel free to contact us. We would be happy to help!
We also have a wealth of in-depth knowledge on using HGV timeshares inside many of the Hilton timeshare articles we’ve posted over the years. Make sure to stay tuned to the SellingTimeshares.Net blog to get all the latest news, expert tips and tricks, and much more!
