Originally Posted by
christianj
Just tried to redeem points for two nights at the Montage in Laguna Beach and there was no availability. Choice's 30 day rule probably makes it somewhat difficult to get an award room at very popular properties that can be booked up that close to arrival. Not sure what determines if Choice will have award availability....all I know is that the Montage had rooms available for booking on their website but at a rate of $795 per night. I can't remember if it was a standard room available on their site or deluxe/upgraded room. Maybe Choice awards can only be for Standard rooms??
FWIW, the Montage is VERY hard to get award nights at, in fact they might not even offer award nights for Choice points. I tried to get a room there during the 20,007 pt promo for Preferred Hotels in Spring 2007. I could find nothing, zippo. I was very flexible and finally I started asking them to check EVERY SINGLE night for the next month and even called them up within 3 minutes of when they opened at 7AM 30 days beforehand several times and still could not get an award night for 30 days later. They did have rooms at Laguna Surf & Sand Resort, but I didn't want to stay there. FWIW, Montage rooms were available in the cheapest room category and were going for like $645-$695 per night. Surf & Sand rooms were going for around $400 per night IIRC. I ended up using my points in Hawaii for a few nights at Mauna Lani Bay & Bungalows Resort on the Big Island (cheapest rooms were going for about $400 per night here) and at Turtle Bay Resort on Oahu (cheapest rooms were going for about $179 per night here). All in all a pretty good deal and I didn't have much trouble getting the nights in Hawaii. But the Montage was a different story and frankly I'm not too surprised considering their cheapest rates start at over $500 per night. I don't know why they even have them on the list though and pretend like you have a chance of getting a free night there with your points. Seems futile to me to make people waste their time and energy and get up their hopes that it might be possible to get an award night there. I also thought it might be just because of the 20,007 promo that nights weren't available but I'm glad to see they aren't available even for 50k points according to an above poster. Oh yeah, one other thing: When I checked out of the Mauna Lani after 2 nights there I got a bill for ~$900. I said it was supposed to be free and they said, "Whoops, that's what we charge Choice for the room". I was shocked that Choice would pay $450 per night when I was only redeeming 20k Choice pts!!!!
Anyways, now that the Amtrak promo has brought in a slew of new Choice participants, we might want to keep this thread updated with people's experiences in redeeming at Preferred Hotels, although IMHO most of the Amtrak ----> Choice pts are probably going to get transferred straight to SWA credits anyways....................