sdsearch

www.bestwestern.com/summer

Base version highlights:

Register now and stay between May 23 and August 28, 2016 and earn a $50 Best Western gift card for every two separate stays. Best Western RewardsŪ members save 10% when booking direct on bestwestern.com and earn 1,000 rewards points for stays completed during the promotion period.

Gift Cards expire November 15, 2016.

For a Base Status Member, a limit of three (3) Gift Cards may be earned through this Promotion. For an Elite Status Member, a limit of five (5) Gift Cards may be earned through this Promotion. If a Base Status Member becomes an Elite Status Member during the Promotion Period, the Elite Status Member limit discussed in the foregoing sentence will apply.

Notes:

The booking direct (for the 1000 point bonus/stay) also works with the mobile site and the mobile app.

There will not be any special AAA/etc versions of this promo this time around, just the "base" version. So don't hold off on registering any longer, since you absolutely need to register before you first stay (for the stay to count toward this promo).

Since you need to be elite to earn 5 gift cards (instead of just 3), if you're going to be doing a bunch of separate stays and aren't elite yet, remember about this:
in case you're elite at some other hotel program.

Remember, as always, as "stay" is defined as any number of nights (1 or more) at the same hotel, no matter how many times you check in / check out. So to maximize the number of gift cards and bonus points from this promo, you need to "hotel hop" if you need consecutive nights in the same area. Stay one night at BW hotel A and one night at BW hotel B down the road, and you've earned 2000 bonus points and 1 gift card. Stay two nights at BW hotel A and you've earned only 1000 bonus points and no gift card yet.

kcaluwae

If I understand correct:
- The giftcard is earned when you complete 2 stays during the promotion period, the moment of booking is irrelevant
- The 1000 bonus points are earned for stays that are booked AND completed during the promotion period.

Is this correct?

sdsearch

No, I don't see anywhere where it says the stay has to booked during the promotion period to earn the 1000 bonus points.

The T&Cs:
say:
My highlighting shows that it says the stay has to occur during the promotion period, not the booking. "Book" is a verb here, but the phrase "to occur during" would modify a noun, and the only noun that precedes it is "stay". So it's the stay, not the booking, that has to occur during the promotion period.

On top of that, I can't recall any previous Best Western promotion where the stay had to be booked during the promotion period either.

However: What it does seem to be saying is that it may not work if you take a reservation that was originally booked for a stay outside the promo period, and you change that reservation to a date that is inside the promo period. It might require a fresh booking in that case. (That's how I read the separate clauses that first you have to book a stay which is scheduled to be inside the promo period, and then you have to actually stay inside the promo period. Just doing one but not the other, because you changed the reservation dates, may not count.)

jm1991

not bad, still wish they brought back the global vouchers. I dont forsee any BW stays unless its a roadtrip night stop.

kcaluwae

Thanks, indeed, if I reread it with your highlighting it makes it easier to understand. Thanks for that :-)

sdsearch

Well, the vouchers are like 36000 points but which expire in half a year. I'd rather just earn 36000 points which don't expire. (Which, if you stay 36 separate time this summer, you can do in the current promo, and that's counting only the 1000 bonus points, not your normal points. Counting your normal points it would probably take 18 stays or even less, depending on cost of each stay. And along the way you'd earn $250 in BW gift cards after 10 stays, assuming elite status.)

And you could earn only one voucher the last time, and it wasn't even global:
So how many years has it been since they had a promo that had a global voucher?

The last time I earned a voucher (and I think the time before that), I had to "waste" it on an "ordinary" hotel (that needed way less than the max 36000 points) because I had no stays anywhere I could good value out of it before it expired. The seem to have purposely made it so you had to earn in summer and only get to use in fall or winter, when fewer people travel to high-cost-redemption places.

jm1991

thats actually pretty good thinking about it still, the only stay im doing at a BW so far is the BW Marina Gateway hotel in San Diego (National city) for 3 nights in August. It looks very promising and chose it over Marriott Marquis or Renaissance because of price.

sdsearch

Update:

Before I wrote:

Well, it turns out there won't be any other versions of this promo (like there were before). So there's no point in waiting any longer to register, since you have to register before your first stay for it work for this promo.

So don't hold out on registering any longer!

(I'm editing my post #1 above to reword the above, in light of this.)

kevino

Hi sdsearch,

Isn't it two stays Worldwide? Thanks.

sdsearch

I copied and pasted from their website. Apparently they had a mistake in the original wording. Thanks for pointing that out, I'm updating my post #1 with the current wording (which doesn't say "worldwide" but doesn't limit it to just a few countries either).

Whether it's truly worldwide or not depends on the country you live in. It's complicated T&Cs, spelled out here:

http://www.bestwestern.com/rewards/o...mer16-base.pdf

For those people who live in a gigantic list of countries (near the bottom of the T&Cs), the first paragraph (which says "worldwide") applies. For those who don't, it's confusing to figure out where it applies and doesn't (is it just the one country they live in?). I presume there's very few Best Western Rewards members in countries that are not on that gigantic list, but I haven't taken much time to peruse the gigantic list to see what countries are left out, besides Liechtenstein and Monaco.

George Purcell

Wow, I have eight booked stays for a trip out west with my son. How quick do they tend to turn around these gift cards?

jm1991

From my experience they get to my email rather quickly. Just don't forget to check your email. I think I have accidentally deleted a gift card because of the promotional emails BW is always sending.

sdsearch

In the last promotion (with the $25 or $35 gift cards), it seemed like it was more than 2 weeks but typically less than 3 weeks.

Eska

I've read the conditions and see "Promotion is not valid with any other offer, promotion, or discount." but:

1. There doesn't seem to be a requirement to have your preference set to earn BW points. i.e. I can set my points to go to Aeroplan still get the 1,000 BW points into my BW account?
2. Do you think there is any chance I get the 1,750 Aeroplan bonus, as well as the 1,000 BW point bonus? If not, how would BW choose which one to give me?

sdsearch

If you care, I think you have to ask them. If you don't care, just do one stay that way, see what happens, and then decide what to do for subsequent stays.

I know I was able to register for the Southwest Airlines bonus (which started first) and then for the Summer bonus. But I switched to earning BW points this week (when the Summer bonus period started). So I'm not testing that myself.

I presume if you're asking you've already successfully registered for both? Because if you didn't register for the Aeroplan bonus before the Summer bonus started, it might be that would lock you out of registering now, I don't know. (But equivalent lockouts have happened before, that I do know.)