TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums St. Maarten - St. Martin Hilton buying Diamond Resorts

received this email
"Dear Members and Owners,

Thank you for your continued trust and loyalty in Diamond Resorts. We strive to provide you with world-class destinations, unforgettable experiences and superior service — helping you to reconnect with what matters most.

With that in mind, I am thrilled to announce an exciting new chapter for Diamond Resorts that we expect will provide you with even more options and flexibility for your vacation ownership. Diamond Resorts and Hilton Grand Vacations (“HGV”) have signed an agreement to join together as one company, with HGV as the acquirer. This combination will bring together the iconic Hilton Grand Vacations brand with the scale and unique culture of Diamond Resorts to create a new global standard of vacation ownership hospitality.


Leading the Industry: More Options in More Destinations = More Memories

Together, the combined company will become one of the largest global timeshare networks, spanning North America, Europe and Asia. The HGV network delivers exciting new resorts in dozens of sought-after beach, ski and city destinations, including New York, Charleston, Park City and Japan.


The Diamond Resorts & Hilton Grand Vacations Commitment

Our commitment to our members and owners is that your vacation experience remains our top priority. Together, we believe we will provide you with one of the broadest offerings available in the vacation ownership industry and achieve new heights of excellence.

As an existing Diamond member or owner, you will continue to have access to the same benefits you have come to enjoy, including: access to Diamond’s resort portfolio, the Destination Xchange® program, the expanded Diamond Dream Holiday selection and our exclusive Events of a Lifetime® series. Over time, we expect most of our Diamond-managed properties to be rebranded under a new HGV sub-brand, further elevating your vacation experience.


Keeping You Informed

The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, and we expect it will take several months to complete. We are committed to being transparent with you throughout this exciting process. To keep you informed, we will endeavor to share important updates as they become available in the What’s New section of your Member Area. If you have any questions, your Member Services team is available to assist you at any time as always. We look forward to providing you regular updates on the status of this transaction.

The completion of this transaction will mark the beginning of a new era of exceptional travel experiences. We can’t wait for you to see the many new destinations and extraordinary experiences in store for you. As always, our owners and members are at the heart of what we do, and we are honored to celebrate starting this new chapter with you.



Mike Flaskey"

Interesting. Thanks for posting.

Wonder if I can use my Hilton
Pints there? Not that I’d want to.

This should be a huge plus for Flamingo and Royal Palm owners. I am a long-term owner at The Hilton Club New York, as well as a previous owner at Flamingo, SXM. Hilton treats their owners right, and has very few complaints from owners.

@RonDon Just to clarify, it is not Hilton Hotels doing the purchase, it is Hilton Grand Vacations. HGV was a division of Hilton Hotels at one time, but it became a separate, publicly-traded company in January 2017. It does have a 99-year marketing rights agreement with Hilton for use of the brand name and some other privileges.

I am an HGVC (Hilton Grand Vacations Club) owner. I can convert my HGVC points into HH points at a multiple, but the opposite does not apply. You can sometimes find excess inventory of HGVC units on the Hilton Hotels website for booking. You can pay cash or use HH points, or a combination of the two, just as with any Hilton-listed property, but you can't book directly into the HGVC system as only a Hilton Honors member.

I hope this change will be good for both HGVC and DRI owners. I also hope it will eventually make it easier for us to access some of the DRI resorts, and vice versa, instead of going through RCI. I would be especially interested in the Embarc portfolio, since it has properties in Canada, which HGVC does not. Embarc (formerly Club Intrawest) used to be affiliated with HGVC until DRI bought them out about 5 years ago. However, as I understand it, even under DRI there are no reciprocal arrangements currently between Embarc members and regular DRI members, so who knows?

I suspect it will be at least a couple of years before there are any real changes in terms of bookings for either DRI or HGVC owners, especially in terms of any reciprocal access. Marriott is still trying to make sense of its acquisition of Vistana and Hyatt vacation systems, after it bought out Starwood. In the short term, it just means the HGV executive team will take over the overall management and supervision of the DRI owned and/or managed resorts and the timeshare sales teams.