Originally Posted by
toomanybooks
For those new to Choice, the program has a history of hosing its participants with little/no notice.
You are unfortunately correct. They also value their reward rooms (points cost) in some arbitrary opaque fashion, and change the numbers almost at random.
Having said that, the program has provided
tremendous opportunities to pile up points. I made just shy of a quarter-million points on their stay 3/get 16K promo a couple of years ago. I turned that into a family vacation to Ireland involving 4 rooms over 5 or 6 nights at a very nice Clarion in downtown Dublin, plus a couple of nights at two of the Preferred properties. To do a similar thing with either of my other hotel chains (Hilton and Marriott) would have required nearly a million points.
So for those of us who gather points in order to use them for award rooms (for me, that means Europe), the Choice program is very attractive. With the recent (to me, anyhow) reduction of their Italian properties to the 8000 point level as an example, I could easily spend a couple of weeks in Europe with "free" hotel stays and very little cost.
There are things about the program I don't like (the iron-clad expiration for example) but for someone who a) pays their own way at hotels, and b) likes to take his family to Europe, Choice is a serious contender,