Originally Posted by
sdsearch
The reason the hotel program will not explain the reasons to you is most likely because the exact reasons are buried in private contracts between the hotel program and its franchisees, and why should you get access to such private contracts just because they're the only thing than can explain the reasons for such policies?
Exactly this.
As you noted, hotels get paid very little when a guest uses points and the hotel isn't sold out. In one hotel I worked, the reimbursement barely covered our costs. If we had to upgrade the guest because they an elite-level member, we actually lost money.
While that information is widely known here at FlyerTalk, it actually could be considered proprietary information. If the answer to the OPs question is related to how franchises are reimbursed, that makes the question essentially unanswerable because of the reasons you mention in the above quote.