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.)