Update: the hotel shortened the stay at the original rate, even before I could reply to my concierge. Given that the responses here don't match my intuition, I'm especially appreciative of them doing this.
Originally Posted by
wrldwide1
But in the meantime rates have been going up for 3 months. And now the hotel has to sell an additional night to someone because you’re leaving a day early.
The hotel may risk losing, say, $100 on the original reservation and stands to make $300 on the new reservation with higher prices. They adjust prices dynamically to reflect demand, so the original "bargain" is costly for the hotel: they underestimated how many rooms would fill up. Otherwise, they would have charged a higher rate from the beginning. To clarify: my booking is still quite a while away, so this is not a last-minute change.
Originally Posted by
Matt4200
It’d be basically the same as me booking 10 nights at a long term rate (minimum 10 nights) then calling in and saying I’d like to change it to 8 nights, but keep the special long term rate.
I agree that you cannot get a discounted rate if you don't meet the minimum requirements for that discount. That's not what happened in my case: their nightly rate simply went up.