Choice Privileges, the rewards program of Choice Hotels, is currently offering a 40% bonus on purchases of their rewards points. Although I’m not a fan of Choice Hotels or the reward program, that’s good enough a deal in some situations – and I have already bought some! Find out why I bought and why you might want to consider it while you can!
Choice Hotels is one of the largest hotel companies in the world with more than 6,500 hotels worldwide. Most of their hotels are in the US and economy or mid-scale properties. While the Choice Privileges rewards program can be very rewarding, it is deeply flawed by restricting members to only make award reservations 100 days in advance, making it more difficult than any other loyalty program to use your points.
But the program has a few sweet spots – one is the fact that they are frequently offering sales like this. During the current promotion through September 13, 2018, any Choice Privileges member (sign-up is free) can purchase up to 50,000 points with a bonus of 40%. At the maximum, you pay $550 for a total of 70,000 points (50,000+20,000 bonus points) or a price of 0.79 cents/point. The bonus starts at a minimum of 5,000 points, you can purchase in increments of 1,000 points andup to 50,000 points per year, so this bonus promotion allows you to buy more points than usual.
I value Choice Privileges points at 0.6ct/pt and therefore I don’t recommend to buy points unless you have a bettervalue redemption in mind!
And that’s where the other quirk of the program comes in – while it is generally very hard to find good value in the program (I tried very hard, trust me!), there is some fantastic value to be found in some countries, like Sweden, Norway or Denmark!
I have an upcoming trip to Copenhagen and Denmark’s capital is one of the most expensive cities in Europe. It also has very few chain hotels, making it difficult to score a free night in the city. Choice Hotels has two hotels in the city. The Skt Petri Hotel is an upscale Ascend property and costs $450/night during my visit. The mid-scale Comfort Hotel Vesterbro is slightly cheaper at a still eye-watering $280.
But luckily, both are available at only 20,000 Choice Points per night. Even if you have to purchase all points needed for a stay, one night will only cost you $158 (20,000pt x 0.79ct/pt) – a saving of $292 per night at the Skt Petri Hotel!
I had a few points left in my account and purchased enough points for a three night stay, with significant savings at either property. Now, I’ll have to keep my fingers crossed that one of them will be available during my visit and I’m sure to look 100 days before to snatch a rewards room as soon as possible.
Choice Privileges is not an easy program, but if you have travel plans for Scandinavia, you can get great value with a little effort! You can purchase points here!
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