Why can't the OP just not check out until the morning of 6th day? You do not even need to personally present to check out. It sounds like they were trying to save one night's rate and now wound up lose several times of that.

If it has never happened to the OP before, why did it cross OP's mind to ask at checkin whether it will "impact my bill?"

There are shades of hidden city airline ticketing to this whole discussion, I think!

My personal view is:
- If the OP booked a rate which required a minimum number of nights to be valid and the OP tried to check out before the minimum number of nights, the hotel has a right to reprice the stay to the current best available rate for whatever number of nights the stay was
- If the OP’s rate didn’t require a minimum number of nights, then the OP should just be charged whatever their booked stay cost was - charging extra for dropping one night apart from in the above situation is ridiculous

I frequently stay at resort hotels where official hotel guidance is you should book an extra night if you want late check out as it can’t be guaranteed. Are you telling me when I check out of my current stay next week at 7pm the hotel should reprice my entire stay because I didn’t stay another 5 hours?

I do agree the OP should have just left and then sent an email to the hotel on the day of check out saying ‘sorry, I didn’t have time to drop by the front desk but I have checked out’.

Oh kiki knew what she was doing...

I think it's total BS what this hotel did to you but don't expect much sympathy in this forum. I've learned this over the years reading lots of other threads.

In my humble opinion though getting back to what this hotel did to you, if you can remember the name of the person who told you that changing the # of nights would NOT impact the rate - that should help. I would think the GM would work with you to come up with a fair resolution but then again the way Marriott imo has gone so downhill who really knows. I wish you luck perhaps getting this worked out because I think it's so wrong.

How easy is it to check out remotely? I personally have always stopped by the FD to get a hard copy of the folio just in case there might be errors before I leave the property.

LAX

By the way, I just went on tripadvisor and read some recent reviews. A lot of poor 1 star ratings. And imo Paul the GM in his responses comes off as arrogant and condescending. I can tell right away just after reading a few of his replies to guests he is not empathetic at all. I travel a ton and my experience has been the vast majority of GM's will try and work out a resolution with the guest and go above and beyond. But not all of course. I go to Las Vegas a fair amount and I could never stay at this hotel with him as GM. I don't believe he would have my back at all if there were any service issues. His replies are very unimpressive so no thanks for me.

I would have done the same as the OP, but...asked for written confirmation that the rate would be honored.

just do it in the app. or if feeling really lazy, just do nothing and leave the keys on the desk or whatever in the room. The hotel will assume you checked out whenever they get around. I've been "checked out" of a room in the mid afternoon despite using the express checkout key drop in the morning, it all depends on when they bother to do it.

Would be helpful, for this thread and future reference, if you could link to where this is stated in the T&Cs.

Does the land of the free not have legislation in place regarding unreasonable pricing or made up fees?

In the UK, the small claims court judge would laugh the hotel out of the courtroom if they seriously tried to explain how in the world they can charge you more for staying less nights, as this - both logically and legally - would not stand.

No, in the United States there is no legislation that bars hotels from charging you the going rate when you change your reservation. If there is in the UK, maybe I'll see if I can change a 5 night reservation for February in Scotland to one for a 4 night one in July and insist they cannot charge me more.

I have a friend who owns a Sheraton & I was discussing this issue with him a number of years ago. He said that hotels often offer lower rates for longer stays so a 3 night or 5 night or 7 night stay would cost considerably less than booking 3 or 5 or 7 individual nights on the same dates. He also says his hotel comes across guests trying to take advantage of this situation frequently by for example booking 5 nights at the lower rate, only to intend staying 4 nights & trying to reduce the number of nights stayed during check-in.

So in these situations a small claims court judge would certainly appreciate why a higher rate was charged if the terms of the lower rate were not met by a reduction in the number of days stayed.

Common logic dictates that the hotel should charge the agreed amount for the original nights booked, despite the early check-out, if that's lower than the recalculated amount for the nights stayed, since that was the contract.

Charging more than the amount agreed at booking, for less nights stayed is insane.

Charging a higher rate to compensate for the 1 less night: certainly yes
Forfeiting the extra night entirely due to no cancellation policy: why not.

But charging more for 4 nights, than for 5 nights combined: no, no, and no. Absolutely impossible to justify in rational terms. I would LOVE to see someone try this on small claims court.