It absolutely has to be brokers/bots. I started refreshing the Choice page about 30 seconds before the atomic clock turned 13:00 on my PC and phone simultaneously and kept at it for at least 15 minutes until I miraculously managed to get one of the 55K packages. Everything was already "on hold" as soon as it went on sale. Same w IHG. Things were never like this for those programs in the past. And HH @ 0.5 cpp is just incomprehensible. I would never buy HH at that price and in most cases it's a terrible deal-- but for a handful of luxury properties I imagine a broker with enough points might be able to sell the rooms at a discount off the cash price-- probably without telling the buyer it is a points redemption. I can't think of any other viable explanation. "Revenge travel" just doesn't explain it.