sosafan

Best Western apparently has a new policy on giving airline miles. You have to be a member of the Gold Crown Club. You can apply at http://www.goldcrownclub.com/join/main.asp

Other discussion at
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum55/HTML/000051.html

Best Western is only 250 miles per stay, and a high fraction of clerks don't credit the stay properly (I have made as many as 5 calls to the Gold Crown Club), but sometimes the price is right for me.

homey

interesting. people actually stay at best westerns? fascinating.

honu

All else being equal, for a measly 250 miles you'd be better off staying with Choice hotels. In my experience, at least, they have a slightly better product, and they seem to be more reliable in actually posting the miles. Of course, your mileage may vary (by hotel and location).

Yes, people stay at Choice and BW's properties when:
a) they're so out in the boonies that these are the best properties available
b) they're not on an expense account or don't feel like blowing a two-week vacation budget in two days.

Not all road warriors here are expense account business travelers. There's a discrete number of self-financed pleasure travelers, some grad students, self-employed consultants etc., who will probably alternate stays at Marriott, Hilton, and Starwood properties w/more budget brands. Sometimes, a decent Choice property in a big city might save a client big $$ over a more luxurious hotel. (BW tends to be at the bottom of the budget list, though, at least in my experience).

jordyn

Also, Best Western has a reasonable number of properties in Europe. I've not stayed in any, but they look like good mid-range hotels (much better than almost any Best Western I've seen in this country). Since most other U.S. chains tend to get fairly high end and expensive in Europe, Best Western properties are probably a pretty good place for leisure travelers to stay.

As others have mentioned, if you get out of urban areas and suburbia, particularly out West, you often find situations in which a Best Western is your only option. In these situations, your mileage may vary, but many of the properties aren't that bad.

Darren

Best Western is more of a joint marketing venture than a chain, so you will have a large range of different hotels.

stephlac

As a self-financed traveller these days I have found many Best Westerns, because they are individually owned, offer very friendly service and very decent accommodations. Nothing fancy, but for the price, I'm nearly always satisfied. As jordyn says, this is especially true in less populated areas, especially out West.

So yes, real people do stay at Best Westerns!

As for miles posting, my experience has been quite mixed. Again, because the hotels are often individually owned, there is less consistency in the procedures to post miles. I'd say I get about 50% hit rate. And if I follow up on missing miles I'd say my results are close to 100%.

honu

Notice that BW hotels in most European countries never participated in the AAdvantage program (not that you'd know the difference anyway: the ones which supposedly participate, in the U.S. for example, don't post your miles anyway).

Points Scrounger

I stayed at one in NYC in July - needed somewhere for 1 night on very short notice and they were quite cheap. Gave my AAdvantage number to the clerk upon checkout. The miles didn't post after a few weeks; I decided that if I took the time to track down the stay, I'd likely be told that the rate was "non-qualifying". Lo and behold - the stay posted in January!!