Originally Posted by
bhrubin
SPG policy is fairly straightforward on this, so you have no choice but to accept that overlapping nights do not officially count, since you can't possibly have stayed at two places for the same night.
It depends on how you define the word "stay". I can easily check in to Hotel A at noon, stay in the room until 6 PM (6 hours in the room), maybe grab a little nap (2 hours sleeping in the bed), then leave and check into Hotel B at 7 PM, stay there for the rest of the night, including a period of sleep. I've done this exact thing many times in the past, albeit the hotels were not owned by the same company.
By any reasonable English language definition of the word "stay" I have stayed in both hotel rooms in my example.
SPG may define a "stay" differently, but they really should just use a different word to avoid confusion. Maybe a "credited unique daily booking" or something a tad bit more accurate.
SPG is free to make a business decision to encourage people to book with anyone other than SPG when needs arise such as these, but they really should do a better job advertising the fact that certain stays will not receive the benefits that they might otherwise expect.