Originally Posted by
IAN-UK
It's simply that the system works by cancelling and rebooking: and in the normal course of events this achieves the required objective of shortening the stay.
But when there are no longer reward nights available, it can't be done (cancelled rewards cease to exist, they don't go back into a pot for redemption anew).
Similarly PB nights disappear when cancelled, so if the PB ration is finished you are out of luck - you can only get regular reward night (or even no reward nights at all, if these are no longer available).
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In a way, the system works to our wider advantage. There's a need to be more circumspect in making reservations, rather than opportunistically blanket booking a few weeks' of nights, then coming back to prune these to requirements. The problem there being that cancelled nights don't get returned to a PB inventory for other PC members to use.
For a time we were able to do this by booking stays one night at a time, and later cancelling unwanted nights - but PC blocked that game.
Yes. This rule curbs speculative reservations where one cast a wider net (removing inventory) only to reduce it later and the property has lesser time to sell them. Another thing. System is designed not to allow trimming of nights on a reservation (points, cash, points and cash) that was already confirmed because properties frequently price their inventory with limitations like mininum nights. Minimum nights are common for discounted and advance bookings. It can be for slow period to move inventory or peak period to balance demands and revenue. Trimming a booked reservation will bypass the minimum nights rule.