During last year's MegaBonus, I was a Gold and they switched me on request.

i'll take a shot at it. Because you are staying in the same property with your friends -- for whom you've booked room #2 under your name/MR # -- one of three things will happen:

1) someone will be sleeping at the switch and give you credit for all three nights will ALL miles.

2) someone will notice, but not care or know enough not to give you all miles and nights.

3) someone will notice and give you credit for either:
a) all three nights
b) all miles
c) a combination of a & b

i did the exact same thing in Portland in December. Can't frankly remember what they gave me but i did OK by it. but i didn't get both nights and miles....

Technically, it might. In my experience, the confirmation number is equivalent to a stay. So if you're booking a reservation for some friends, be sure to have your name on the reservation as well as one of your friends' names. This stay should show up separately on your MR account.

FYI, get a copy of the folio for your records and make sure that it shows your MR # on it.

OK, these issues have been discussed numerous times and many of us have had personal experiences with multiple rooms and consecutive night stays.

The bottom line may be found in the T&C on the Marriott Rewards web site detailing point earnings.

As a rule you will only get credit for 1 stay on back-to-back reservations comprising a stay of consecutive days at the same hotel. This is why many on this forum will switch hotels. As stated in MR T&C:

You will also only get credit for 1 night per night booked (regardless of number of rooms booked) and credit for 1 stay for booking multiple rooms. Make sure to consolidate your bills as stated in the MR T&C in order to get points, otherwise you will have to call MR CS in order to get it straighten out and get the other rooms' points posted. As stated in MR T&C:

I booked 4 7-day reservations at the Vail Marriott for a total of 3 weeks (2 rooms 1 of the weeks). This ended up being 1 stay for which I received 21 nights credit. I have done stays similar to this in previous years at Vail and also at Marriott properties in Hawaii and the Caribbean and the results have been consistently the same.

Now there may be isolated exceptions to these rules, but from my experience I have not encountered any of those exceptions.

Now if you stay at a Marriott property and do not check out and then stay at another Marriott property then you would get credit for both stays and nights because they are NOT at the same hotel. An example of this might be someone who is doing a long term stay at a Residence Inn and travels somewhere else for a few days for business or pleasure and stays at another Marriott property and doesn't check out of the RI. In a recent thread somebody was bragging about how many nights they had this year as a result of a situation just like this.

I hope this explanation clears up some of the supposition being bantered about.

I reviewed the offers you posted and compared that to my stays/reservations. I have a total of 6 stays and 36 nights in the eligibilty period. I have already stayed 26 nights (4 stays) so far in the eligibilty period (and I still have two more upcoming 5 night stays!).


The 20 nights/35K seems like the best deal for me. I called today and got the promo changed. ^

I'd already received 7500 bonus points from the first 3 stays (a 4th stay hasn't posted bonus points yet). The phone rep said that the remaining balance of points would post the day after the promo ends (May 16) after any other bonus points post. :-:

Thanks much for the info! :cool:

I think some of it is related to posting errors by the hotel, and some of it is related to hotels making credit go through that is not eligible.


Except that credit for stays made in parallel are not allowed.

Note the part about "personally pays and stays", if you aren't there, it doesn't count. Hotels may post parallel stays in error, but it isn't normal.

I have the same promotion -- 10,000 points for every third stay. My 3rd stay was last week and the points for the stay have posted. When should I expect my 10,000 MegaBonus points to post? Thanks!
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13F

I have just earned my 10,000 points for my 2nd 3-day stay and for my 3rd 3-day stay within the past week.

Seat13F_AC_CRJ, your points for your 1st 3rd stay should post to your MR account within 2-3 business days. Will you be able to earn the other stays by May 15th?

Hi Marcell -- this is FlyerTalk... no need to be so formal. I prefer using my "petit nom", "13F."

Thanks for your info. I guess I'll have to be patient. And yes, I should be able to squeeze in three more stays befoer the deadline.
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13F

While I respectfully disagree with your comment about parallel stays, since nowhere is that documented in MR T&C and in practice one gets points and stay credits for both hotels.

The point that you bring up about "personally pays and stays" made a bit of sense until I applied a bit of reality to it. With regard to parallel stays you are personally staying at both hotels.

Scenario: I move to a new city and check into a RI for a month. I take a few business trips during that month and stay at FS Marirotts in other cities; during this time most of my belongings are still back at the RI (hence presence of a personal stay).

Under your scenario, Marriott properties would have to do a bed check at the RI and somehow transmit the information to MR when I check out of the RI that I stayed or didn't stay there X number of nights. Logistically this is not going to happen, plus the whole concept of the MR Room Monitor is quite absurd. If I check in, show my ID, occupy the room with my belongings, checkout, and settle my bill personally, then I stayed from the perspective of the hotel.

If that is not the case, then please explain to me how they will determine and track what nights I actually stayed, or did not stay, at a particular property.

They don't really have to go quite that far. All that they have to do is observe that you are getting credit for two (or more!) hotels on the same calendar night and limit credit to one. They can give points for all the stays, but night credit could not exceed 365 nights per year (ignoring leap years).

I'm not saying that Marriott does anything like that or is planning to do so. I'm just saying that they don't have to know where you really were to limit the number of nights that you earn.

Bruce

While I agree with you, I also enjoy playing devil's advocate.

They can tell from when the key card was used to enter the room and what key card was used. It is actually a very simple process.

Thanks - I tried to be swapped (as silver) but no luck

I agree with you in theory. But then they should add a rule that you can't get credit for parallel stays to their T&C, which they do not currently have. I have no problem with that.

I was objecting to the use of the "personally pays and stays" T&C as a basis for not allowing parallel stays. Using that rationale just doesn't wash for the reasons and context provided in my previous post.

Although even with a "no parallel stays" rule and tracking as you suggest, then there would be logistics issues and the need for much more intelligent software. For example during a month long stay at the Residence Inn, suppose there were also 6 business trips which already posted. I have a feeling their software would need to be a bit more robust than it currently is to credit the RI stay correctly when checkout occurs after the other 6 stays have posted. The initial implementation would probably just not allow night accrual for any of the RI stay which is wrong and would result in numerous calls to CS. They would eventually get it right, or inadvertently give full credit. Is it worth the time and effort resulting from cases like this to spend the extra money and time to enhance, test and implement the software to facilitate this, and/or the time and effort for Marriott Reward CSRs to handle mispostings. And at the same time possibly alienating your best customers, as the ones exhibiting this type of stay patterns are probably some of your best customers. Does it really matter that they have 280 nights instead of 195?. My guess is Marriott does not really care about parallel stays and will not add rules to their T&C to prevent this. It just isn't worth it from a business perspective.

It is my understanding that the key cards are not connected to any sort of central computer. During a power blackout a couple of years ago I was worried that I would be locked out of the room. The key worked perfectly.

I asked and was told that the locks are battery operated -- no external connections required. The computer and circuitry inside the lock knows whether a card is valid and so forth, but AFAIK there is no connection to Marriott's Big Brother computer.