Originally Posted by
RogerD408
Don't expect it to work for the full 10 nights. Many properties violate the DND so no advantage there. Expect at some point housekeeping will enter the room and if it appears no one has been there will report that to the front desk and you're likely to be checked out at that point. If you book a few weekends and do this showing up on Friday night for a three-night stay and repeat it a few times, then it might work out.
I agree, doing phantom stays (check in, put out the DND sign, mess up the bedsheets, and leave) works well for
short stays. There have been anecdotes in this forum about hotels figuring out, one way or another after a few days, that the guest is no longer using the room and "helpfully" checking them out early. A one-night phantom stay is foolproof, for two nights it's nearly certain to work, beyond that the chance of something going wrong gradually increases. By 10 nights I'd expect a very high chance of it. So, like
RogerD408 and others have suggested, I recommend doing 10 nights as multiple shorter stays.
I understand going back for multiple stays is challenging with the hotel not being nearby and with only 10 weeks left in the year. If you do it as one stay and it works, I think we'd all love to hear about it. OTOH, consider the alternative of doing trips that are not pure mattress runs but something more like stay-cations.
For example, at various times I've planned discretionary hotel stays to hit promo targets. City 2 hours away has a few museums we haven't seen? Let's plan a weekend trip! Evening show at a theater 90 minutes away? Let's stay nearby that night instead of driving home and arriving at midnight. Got nieces and nephews? Book a hotel with an indoor pool and invite your sister/brother over; the kids love splashing around in the water.