stallion114

Best I could do was Choice Plat from Marriott Plat.
I tried for Hyatt Diamond to Choicce Diamond by sending in both Marriott and Hyatt credentials.

BobH

Do the choice hotels give their elite members anything of real value besides a free paper?

By comparison, Hilton gives you a free breakfast at Hilton Garden Inns if you're Gold or Diamond.

Bob H

kipper

You receive an extended booking window for rewards and bonus points for each stay, at a tiered level--gold is 10%, platinum is 25%, and diamond is 50%.

sdsearch

By comparison, Priority Club doesn't give you free breakfast at Holiday Inn or Crowne Plaza or Intercontinental, even if you're Platinum. (Of several programs I belong to, Hilton HHonors is the only one where I get free breakfast and free internet at all properties worldwide due to status. But, of course, it costs way more money to stay at most HHonors properties than not only most Choice properties, but in many areas even a substation number of Priority Club properties. So since all my stays are on my own dime, the Hilton benefits are nice but I can't use them on most of my stays, because I can't afford the Hilton HHonors properties.)

Anyway:

Choice allows the upper two levels of Choice elite to do the current stay-2-get-8000 promo 5 times, but those who aren't the upper two levels of Choice elite can only do it 2 times (and thus earn tens of thousands of points less for their next 6 stays, if they do 6 more Choice stays during the promo period).

And this is far from the only promo where the promo was "richer" for Choice upper elite than others.

Btw. Choice has precious few properties that have a paid breakfast (at least in the US). The breakifast is already free for everyone at Comfort, Sleep, Quality, etc.

So it's as if (comparing to HHonors benefits) almost all HHonors properties were Hamptons. What's the big HHonors Diamond benefit you get a Hampton, one bottle of water?

BobH

Thanks -- I have only one stay planned at at Clarion property in the next year or so, so it's not really worth going for a status match.

(Most of my travel is for meetings held at Hilton properties)

Bob H.

kipper

It seems Choice properties are the 2nd choice for Mr. Kipper's stays (he doesn't make the arrangements), so he was matched Best Western Platinum to Choice Gold. No idea why they'd only give him Gold, but it's better than nothing.

iahphx

Surprised they didn't give you plat, but I guess they're not much you can do (ask again, maybe?).

As a heavy user of Discover America-generated Choice points (I rarely pay to stay in their hotels), the only real benefit of status is the expanded booking window. I'm a bit surprised they don't toss in a space-available upgrade for high level elites, but even this wouldn't be particularly valuable to me because you can often upgrade for free to a better room when booking your award stay.

kipper

LOL, I don't think it's worth asking again--it's a 2nd choice, so if he hits one of their elite tiers, it's usually only gold anyway.

Jazzop

Those cheap .......s only comped me to Plat after I sent them statements showing my Marriott/SPG/Priority Club Plat status and activity (all earned, not comped).

Million Mile Secrets

I submitted my Priority Club Platinum Ambassador card and statement and within one day I got a reply indicating that I was status-matched to Choice Privileges Platinum.

That's too bad, since I will be transferring a lot of points from Choice to United at the reduced rate!

lsed

I've got an award booking coming up and would like a upgrade too. But what level are you that they gave you a free upgrade?
On the website, it shows only Diamonds get free upgrades?

Will send them an email now. Hopefully it gets processed quick. My stay is in 5 days!

sdsearch

I think you misunderstood iahphx. By "you can often upgrade for free to a better room when booking your award stay", what I believe iahphx meant is that you can simply book a better room than the cheapest-on-cash, in many cases, for exactly the same number of points as the cheapest-on-cash.

Two examples: At the Comfort Hotel Diana where I booked a room in the "shoulder season", I could use the same 8000 points/night to book about half a dozen different types of rooms, from one which cost 180 Euros in cash to one which cost about 300 Euros in cash. "Naturally" I chose the latter. And there's the famous-here case of booking $2900/night suites in Norway for 16000 points/night (though no of us actually ended up being assigned the $2900/night suite, I did get assigned some sort of suite which I'm sure was a downgrade from the $2900/night suite but an upgrade from most anything else).

So in that case the word "upgrade" didn't mean a status-based check-in-time upgrade, but simply a booking upgrade (which is available to anyone who's booking with points, at least at certain hotels where such a variety of rooms is available for points and available period).

duxfan

Thanks for the info. I've been working in a small town where BW and Choice are the only options. I've been complaining about the BW for months, but the company wouldn't let me move. Just found out that starting next week I'll be at Choice (finally). I'm HI Plat, BW Diamond, Hilton Gold, Radisson Silver and Marriott Silver (via CC, everything else earned. I'm hoping for Diamond, but sounds like I'll get plat at best. I'll let you know how it goes....^

honu

When you are matched to, say, Platinum, how long does the status match going to last? In other words, would I be better off waiting until next January to request a match (probably to PC Platinum) or does it make no difference?

duxfan

Took Choice 5 days to respond, asking for statements to be faxed in. As I was out on the road at the time, statements have just been faxed in. We'll see what the turnaround time is from here. It's not about the upgrades when I'm travelling for work, it's more about the points and upgrades when I'm not....