Originally Posted by sdsearch

That's the issue with using Discover America with Choice (or, if available, with Priority Club for PointBreaks): You can't predict the redemption rate far enough in advance to avoid either buying too little or too much.

IMHO, choice works best for those who often enough need cheap suburban hotel stays in the US anyway, and can steer those stays to Choice during stay 2 get 8000 promos (which are very common). Then the easy goal is to keep earning oodles of points, then if you end up with too much, either burn them at those cheap suburban hotels outside of earning promos, or transfer to an airline. Since you haven't "paid extra" to get those points (you simply changed where you stay), it's not a problem ff sometimes you have to burn them up or transfer them out just to keep them from expiring. But I would guess that would seem like a worse fate if you had bought them in anticipation of using them one way and had to use them up a less effective way.

Or the other way it works well is for those traveling to a region where the point requirement fluctuates little (and yet is a good value), like Scandinavia (where most Choice hotels are 16k/night all year every year, knock on wood).