lamphs

Maybe someone is smarter than I as I am terribly confused.

I registered for the 2 stay/receive a $50 gift card promotion. I received an e-mail that stated I qualified for the gift card.

I tried to find out more via my account. Could not find anything. Called the Privileges #. A very nice rep explained that I would have to use 8,000 points to 'redeem' the gift card, which would then be sent to me via US mail.

Using points made no sense to me. She explained that my two stays received bonus points for the express purpose of redeeming the gift card. That still made no sense as the points for the two stays totaled less than 8,000 points. (Yes, it appears the second stay earned about 4,000 more points than it normally would.)

If I follow The Points Guy valuation, 8,000 Choice points are worth about $48. So it's a wash.

What am I missing or is this just a situation where the offer has a lot of fine print?

(Note that Best Western had a similar offer. I received my gift card last week, immediately upon checking out of my second stay.)

sdsearch

You don't seem to understand the meaing of The Points Guy valuation.

They simply intend that so that you can see whether your particular redemption is a good value (if it's much more than that) or poor value (if it's that or lower). Ie, it's intended as a reference point, nothing more.

Choice doesn't make its points redemptions proportional to cash cost.

For one thing, Choice hotels at the bottom of their individual hotel web page publish the points requirements for the next few months, and they're same for a given day of the week for a period time, no matter what the cash rate is.

For another thing, at a lot of Choice hotels, you can book a suite or an expanded room for the same amount of points as for the least expensive room. Ie, a "free upgrade" which doesn't require status, but requires redeeming Choice points for Choice hotels.

So there is no fixed value to Choice hotel redemptions. Some Choice hotel redemptions are great value, and some are not-so-great value. But they're not a fixed value.

lamphs

First, TPG works for me, but thank you for your input (been at this for a long time and we all use different interpretations).

The point I was making it that it makes no sense to me to have to redeem points that I earned otherwise for a $50 gift card; noting that the $50 gift card was the result of a promotion of two stays within a certain time period. It just seems to me that this is a false promotion, IF I am understanding the Privileges customer service rep. And is 8000 points worth the squeeze for $50? (I should mention that I did not purposefully chose this promotion - it just happened to be available at the right time.)

sdsearch

Well, in Japan many Choice hotels cost only 8000 points a night even when they're well over $100 equivalent in US dollars a night.

And here in the USA, in certain locations during certain seasons on certain days of the week, it's often not hard find a decent Choice hotel for 12000 points per night that's about $100ish + tax or more per night.

So compared to that, I would say 8000 points for a $50 gift card is not the best value of redemption possible. They just try to trick you into thinking it's a good value.

Brendan

It seems we all agree that it is almost always a way better deal to use the 8000 points toward a room than to get a $50 GC. Maybe people who don't need to travel for quite a while want $50 in gasoline instead.