Originally Posted by
gsorob
Thanks to everyone for the link.
I have difficulty understanding the reasoning behind this policy, however. If I truly wanted or needed the extra stay for qualification purposes, then I would decidely look to staying at some other nearby, cheaper Hilton property thus reducing my overall revenue to Hilton. Am I missing something here?
You need 60 nights or 28 stays to get Diamond status (or 36/16 for Gold). If they counted different reservations and not different stays, they assume (probably correctly IMHO) that people would easily do 16 back-on-back reservations to get their status with as little as 16 paid nights instead of 28. By enforcing a merge of consecutive nights, they assume (not totally correctly IMHO) that people who are for 3 nights in a locale won't do 3 relocations because of the hassle, just to get status.
Maybe some will do to "top up" their stay counter, but they probably decided it was uncommon enough.
Plus, in your example, they'd have one person switching stays (one night in the cheapest Hilton, another in the next cheapest) instead of selling two night in the cheapest : if someone was doing a mattress run, he'd systematically go for the cheaper offer around).