Multiple night... charged highest nightly rate?
 

So I started to notice this issue lately, maybe not too soon having booked several hundred nights with starwood in the last few years.

Not sure if it has always happened like this, or if its a system error, or if its a way to increase yields.

Basically, I noticed that when there is different price between different nights, ALL nights get charged the MOST expensive nightly rate.

For example, if I input Jan 15 to Jan 18 I'll see $200 a night Total $600

But if I enter it separately...

Jan 15-16 : $150
Jan 16-17 : $150
Jan 17-18 : $200
Total: $500

Does anyone have suggestion aside from making separate bookings? I'd hate to do this because its a waste of time, but if I need to spend 10 minutes to save $100, i'd be glad, lol.

Not all properties do this. I just checked four nights at a property. Individually, each night was a different rate (as much as $80 difference between the lowest/highest). When I check the rate for a four-night stay, it is roughly the average of the four individual rates.

My experience has been the average rate that controller1 mentioned.

Same, or lower than the average rate, but not higher.

Maybe the expensive night ( Jan 17-18 : $200) is a different room type?
The same room type needs to be availanle for all nights of the stayto get the rate of it.

How situations like this price is totally up to the hotel's revenue manager. You can see pricing where all nights price higher, or you can see pricing where only the "in demand" night prices higher and is averaged out over the rest of the stay.

Starwood does a lot of centralized revenue management so if you're noticing this more often at certain properties now vs different behavior in the past, it could indeed be a newish policy. Or it could be an in-market based response to the competition doing it as well.

It should be lower with more nights as you can take up third or fourth night free offers.

Just make separate bookings, and then ask them to combine it when you check in.

As it seems no-one else has chimed in with "yes, I have noticed this too", it would be useful if you could post an example or two of what you have been seeing, including the $500/$600 January one.

I haven't noticed it as a rule, but I have seen it happen before that individual nights can sometimes be cheaper than multiple nights. Sometimes I've seen the opposite, and normally it's just an average.

For your stay, have you checked to see if Z3H or Z3R bring the price down? If it happens to be available for your dates and property, you might get it for a song...

This has been a situation for many years now. I got into the habit to check the entire stay, each individual night of the stay, and then any combination of consecutive nights of the stay. Yes, it was a pain, but since I was saving quite a bit of money, it was worth my time. Some properties were good about keeping me in one room, some required a change (and I didn't notice that much of a difference, if any at all).

It's all part of the game these days. Choose your battles.

I have encountered the same situation several times over the years and have ended up making separate bookings to bring down the average/total cost.

My experience/observation is that compared to IHG and Hilton, the SPG website does not mix rates - at least with my corporate discount. Even though our discount is % based, it does not discount over the weekend rate. I end up with the more expensive weekday rate straight through.

So, if I stay a weekend of a 2 week stay, I have to call. The agents can put multiple rates in a single reservation. So, I end with things like M-Thu with corporate discount, Thu-Mon with the much lower weekend rates, Mon-Fri with the corporate again. Sometimes, the savings are significant.

My experience with Marriott is that if I stay weekday+weekend, a lot of time the whole stay goes into a "long stay" rate than the higher Mon-Thu/Fri rate. However, I think that is location-dependent.