Originally Posted by
Starwood Lurker
I guess I'm missing the discouragement part.
If I get/renew status on 28 February, I get one year. If I get/renew status on 01 March, I get
two years. That's active discouragement to get/renew status early (or you could consider it active encouragement to delay achieving/renewing status, but they're really the same thing). It means you should
never do 10 stays in the first two months of the year - always hold something back.
This gets even worse if you already have status. Let's say I'm Gold now through 2011. If I have 10-24 stays in January/February 2010, I get
absolutely no benefit whatsoever. But if I push one of those stays to 01 March or later, I get another full year of status!