Settle down... This isn't anything sketchy to lose your account over. This is perfectly ethical. There is a reason as to why they allow a second guest on the reservation. I know that their belief is that i am staying there but there is no way for them to catch on being that the second guest is able to check in and out. Take a deep breath...
Ethical it clearly is not, but some people don't have any ethics so we'll discuss that later. My wife has a different last name than me, and I can tell you from experience that hotels frequently either won't let her check in first as the additional guest (this has mainly happened outside the U.S.) or they insist that I come down at some point after they let her check in early to verify that I'm there. Could I get away with ignoring that request on a one night stay? Sure. If I do that more than a couple times is it going to reflect in the Hilton or Marriott CRM system? Absolutely. So like I said, if one doesn't care about ethics or being a jerk to fellow elites, one still has to contend with the fact that they're knowingly and willfully breaking a program rule with consequences that vary from not having a room to losing status and accumulated points.
Now, is it ethical? For starters it violates the rules the elite member agreed to when they signed up for the program, and most people would consider breaking your word to be unethical at best. Not to mention the lie/attempt at deception of booking a room in one's name knowing you arent going to stay and putting your name in for the sole reason of circumventing the program rules. And they know full well they're violating program rules, otherwise they would just book the hotel in the other person's name or call the hotel and tell them what they intended to do. One can be a liar and break their word and I suppose some don't care as long as they can convince themselves its some big bad corporation they're cheating so that makes it all OK. But when I don't get a room upgrade after following the program rules to obtain status because someone with a higher status booked a room they have no intention of personally staying in to get someone without status that room upgrade its not a victimless action. Plus the elite member is obtaining elite nights and points for a room they never had an intention of occupying, so their elite status itself is in part obtained by this sham.
A pretty universal ethical framework is to ask yourself what would happen if everyone did what one is proposing. Imagine if every non-elite guest found an elite member to book a room for them and cheat the system in the manner proposed? The entire program would be pointless and the entire elite program would go away. But calm down man, it's not everyone doing it, it's just a few of us selfish a-holes who feel entitled to cheat the system in a way we acknowledge would break the entire system if everyone did it?
