I've posted a spreadsheet with my data so far. It's here on this very crude webpage for the moment. (I'll replace the webpage when I have time to tie it in with the rest of my website.)
Included are each hotel's...
Property ID Code
Brand code (GDS code)
Name
Latitude/Longitude (can be copied directly into Google Maps)
Reward cost for Apr 16 - Jun 30, 2010
Reward cost for Jul 1 - Sep 15, 2010
AAA rating
Reward cost change on July 1 (points)
Reward cost change on July 1 (percent)
Bonus Points Package notes
Other Package notes
Disclaimer Text (Smoking, pets, parking, etc.)
Unforunately, I did not capture the city or address for each property, and many of the names are not particularly informative by themselves. I might go back and add those later. The first two characters of each hotel's Property ID Code (PIC) corresponds to its state or country.
I also have not yet collected any sample rates for every property, but that has been proposed so that they could be compared to the cost in points.
The spreadsheet is saved in .xlsx format intended for Office 2007. Column headings are set up to allow easy sorting and filtering.
Keep in mind that changes in reward costs are often seasonal. Big increases or decreases are not necessarily permanent changes.
I had 519 more hotels for which no data was returned. Upon further review of a sample of them, these seem to all be hotels which have left Choice for one reason or another during the last year or two. (Some probably rebranded, gone independent, closed, kicked out, remodeling, or etc.)
I have a list of about 153 new* hotels which are not yet in the spreadsheet. When I add them, I'll add a column to indicate that they are new to Choice.
No really, you rock for doing this. It might help some people decide if they need to buy more points while they last. I got a pile to get rooms for my son while visiting Japan this summer. At 8K night, its cheaper than some hostels.
I'm not really a Choice Hotel person but I do see some value in this point buying deal.
As one of the 90 million or so people who haven't upgraded to Office 2007 (nor has any company I've worked for done so, either), I'm unable to open the spreadsheet.
I found a couple of sites that can convert them back to .xls format, but just as a point of reference, if I had spent the time you obviously did on creating this work, I'd make sure as many folks as possible could use it. Unless there's something about Office 2007 files (I'm not familiar with them) that absolutely requires the capabilities therein.
[Old joke: A young TV executive is complaining at a meeting, "Why do we bother programming anything on Sunday morning? Isn't everyone out playing polo?"]
__________________ "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
For low-frills online access, I've uploaded the 5/23/2010 version here on Google Docs.
Assuming that you at least have Office XP or Office 2003, are you willing to try the free MS Office Compatibility Pack? If there's a reason not to install that and it's really important to have it in .xls format, let me know.
There probably are not any unique characteristics in the shared version of this spreadsheet, but there likely are some unique characteristics in the larger version that I used for loading and parsing the data. I decided to publish it as .xlsx so that I wouldn't need to worry so much about testing it in older releases.
When I publish the next version, it will have some more features for narrowing down searches. In my own version, I've already parsed out the 2-character state/country code to another column and have integrated a method for sorting hotels by distance from a particular location (based on lat/long, when available).
OT:
I'd bet that there's probably several debates about the pros and cons of Office 2007 somewhere else here on FT. It's sort of a big leap at first, but I've come to prefer it very much over the prior versions. A fairly affordable way to get a licensed copy might be to find someone who has extra licenses from a 3-license package of the Office Home and Student edition or would like to share the cost of purchasing one. ($50/license or less.)
Employees of many businesses and organizations may also have access to a nice discount under the MS Home Use Program. ($9.95 for Office Professional Plus.) IME, if you got the 2007 version for $9.95 and kept the authorizing email from MS, the same link from that email will let you in to purchase the 2010 version. Or the 2007 version might be eligible for a free upgrade to 2010. YMMV.
__________________
Please contact me for referrals for joining Choice, Hilton, Marriott, or Groupon.
I don't want this to degenerate into a "mine's bigger than yours" discussion - we can save that for OMNI.
The places where I've worked are all fairly large (thousands of employees) and use, I'm sure, around 10,000 computers. Almost invariably, they're still using WinXP and Office 2000/2003. None of them upgraded to Vista or, AFAIK, to Windows 7, simply because the cost and hassle involved has not been considered to be worth it for the marginal benefits received.
It's even worse with applications, because if the newer apps produce documents in an incompatible format (which Microsoft is notorious for), they've got to upgrade everybody very quickly.
Besides, these companies are not in the business of riding the leading edge; if their current tools enable them to get the job done, why should they change? This is the problem of the 'installed base', and it plagues every industry with technology that is evolving at a fast clip. It's why our TV sets (until quite recently) used the same standards developed in the 1940's.
Hi ho.
But, again, thanks for the incredible job you did. I looked at the US market for my spreadsheet and decided it was just too much for manual methods. Besides, I was only interested in award stays overseas, so I didn't bother with the rest. Spending 10,000 points for an Econolodge in Lake Placid (which my SIL did) was just not a big number for me .
__________________ "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!"
Bump. These are numbers from around this time last year. I haven't looked them over to see how they compare today. Still, this might help some folks. I don't currently have any plans to invest time into updating this.
__________________
Please contact me for referrals for joining Choice, Hilton, Marriott, or Groupon.
Bump. These are numbers from around this time last year. I haven't looked them over to see how they compare today. Still, this might help some folks. I don't currently have any plans to invest time into updating this.
Choice Privileges property and redemption spreadsheet
