It’s a pretty common practice to book multiple consecutive stays at the same property. This is a smart way of booking a longer stay when your stay duration is not confirmed.

e.g., You are visiting a city for some work and not sure whether you will need 5 days or 7. So, you book one stay for 5 nights and the other one for 2 nights. This way, you have the flexibility to cancel the second stay if need be. Of course, this only works if the stay can be cancelled at the last moment.

However, if you are not careful, you might end up losing status nights and points for the stay.

This happened to us recently.

We booked 2 stays at an Accor property. First one for 2 nights and the second one for 3 nights. Ultimately, we decided not to cancel and stay for all 5 nights.

At the end of the first stay, I walked down to the reception and informed them about the second stay. I offered to pay, but was informed that they have merged the bookings and I can pay at the end of the stay. Agreeing to that was a mistake.

A few days after check-out, I received points and status night credits for the second stay only.

The first booking showed as ‘ABERRANT_INVALID_PRICE’ in the app. My guess is that the front desk didn’t merge the stays correctly and only carried forward the total charges in the first invoice.

To make matter worse, I was 5 nights away from being a Platinum. And after staying for 5 nights, I am still 2 nights away.

I have emailed Accor, emailed the hotel in question, and sent Accor ALL team DMs on Twitter. Over a week and haven’t received any reply from anyone. But Accor does take time to reply. They ultimately do.

Unfortunately, if the issue is not resolved in time, I will have to do a mattress run(which is really sad) for 2 nights at a local Ibis.

This happened with Accor ALL but can as well happen with any hotel.

Moral of the story: Don’t merge reservations. Clear the bills for each stay individually and save a copy of the invoice.