priority according to time of submission is a SPG urban legend. That’s not how they do it. Short stays take precedence over longer stays and several other factors are at play before first-past-the-post.

Yes, I know but I still want the tiebreaker to be in my favor if possible. The short stays "priority" operates through availability in that the (same) suite must be available for the entire stay for the upgrade to be considered.

no, that’s not at all correct. if you have a property with 2 suites on the SNA pool and both are available for the next 15 days (no bookings, no blocks) and SNA requests were submitted for three different reservations checking-in on the same day, one for 2 nights, the other for 4 nights and another for 7 nights, the system will clear the SNA request for the two shorter stays, regardless of the dates each request was submitted.

That’s interesting information. What’s your source? Any insight into why the system would do this? I would’ve thought that the date of the SNA request would surely be the most important factor.

I’m not privy to any proprietary information, but over the times I’ve had the opportunity to chat with people who are more familiarized with the program than me. I can’t say that the example I gave is a definitive and absolute rule, but I am quite confident that the SNA system is geared towards favoring shorter stays, and for good reasons: SPG has to pay properties for each upgraded night, and properties want their suites available to maximize revenue from last minute bookings.

My point is, time of submission is not the decisive factor, much less the only factor, in ranking SNA requests.

SPG pays for each upgraded night. If they pay for a seven night upgrade, that person only has three remaining SNAs to use during the remainder of the year (or at least until hitting 50 nights again, assuming that SNAs are being used during a calendar year basis with none being used during the preceding/following year to simplify), but if the two night stay upgrade is cleared, that person has eight more SNAs to use at other hotels. Unless SPG is really hoping that avoiding upgrade approvals for longer stays makes SNAs more likely to expire unused--and I'm not convinced that there is such an effect--the rule wouldn't make sense. In fact, since the SNA process consumes some staff time/resources, SPG should prefer that we request and use our SNAs for as few stays as possible, which would mean favoring longer stays rather than shorter stays.

Try telling that to a property owner who gets paid $10.00 per night for SNA upgrades.

FWIW I am so far 8 for 8 on SNA redemptions
(29 nights)
5 of my 8 redemptions were for 5 Nights
( one was 2 nights, two were 1 night)

For me, I would do the same. Reduce the risk that I forgot to apply those sna in the future date.