You will receive 16000 points, which can be redeemed for 2 $50 gift cards, or towards anything else Choice offers for points.

They do enforce the stay rule in the promos. If you check in to the hotel Friday May 25th and check out the 26th, you need to wait until Sunday the 27th to check back in. One way around this is if there is a second Choice hotel in town that you can use and alternate nights* between the two.

*Remember that Rodeway, Econo Lodge, MainStay, and Suburban require 2 night stays to qualify.

If you stay four consectuive nights at the same Comfort Inn, you will only get the normal points (way less than 8000!), and no gift card option at all.

If you stay one night, don't stay the next night, stay another night, don't stay the next night, stay another night, don't stay the next night, and stay one more night, then you will get 16000 points, which you can then choose to redeem for one of a handful of different kinds of gift cards (including but not limited to gas).

But you have to check out of the hotel and wait one night before checking back in for it to be counted as a separate stay, and thus earn 8000 points (for each two stays).

If you have two Choice properties in town, the simple solution is to "hotel hop", ie, stay at hotel A the first night, hotel B the second night, hotel A the third night, and hotel B the fourth night. Then each hotel only sees you on alternate nights and thus each hotel sees each night as a separate stay.

In general: A stay is any number of consecutive nights at the same hotel, regardless of how many times you check in and check out.

Then specific to this promotion, there are stay minimums that vary depending on the brand: For the "mainline" brands (the ones that earn 10 pts/dollar normally), you only need 1 night minimum to count as a "stay" for this promotion. For the "low end" brands (the ones that earn 5 pts/dollar normally), you need a 2 night minimum to count as a "stay" for this promotion. Comfort, Quality, and Sleep are among the "mainline" brands, so 1 night is sufficient for a "stay" there. Rodeway and EconoLodge are among the "low end" brands, so a 2 night minimum is required at those brands to count as a "stay" for this promo.

Perhaps another way to do it is to split the stays between two members...a husband and wife, for example. Stay the first night on a reservation in her name, the second night on a reservation in his name; repeat for nights three and four. Four stays, two bonuses, no hopping. Most of the time the property will be happy to keep you checked in to the same room. The only hassle is that housekeeping may be confused, thinking you are leaving each of your four days. Also, if you don't inform the desk upfront that you are staying four nights you will have to get the card keys updated each day.

Caveat: I say "perhaps" because, while I have done this at another hotel group, I've not yet tried it at Choice. Has anyone else tried this at Choice?

Except too much of the time the property will also be happy to merge the reservations, despite the different names, the moment you ask to stay in the same room! (They consider that a convenience, because to all non-points-collectors it is, and some properties require that to keep the same room!)

So, no, I think this is a terrible suggestion if your goal is to have it count as separate stays each night. The only way you should split the stay between two member is if you do not try to keep the same room, and do not allow the hotel to realize that it's the same people in both cases (ie, don't be together when the alternate people check in).

At any rate, since you can't count on 8000/night hotels, I wouldn't necessarily even recommend (all logistics aside) someone only doing 4 nights to split it between two accounts. That'll leave just a paltry 8000 points per account, which is not a whole lot. (Not that just 16000 points is a whole IMHO either, but still, if you want one night at a 16000 point/night hotel, say in Scandinavia, you can do it all 16000 points are in the same account but not if 8000 points are in one account and 8000 points in another account.)

I don't think there is a possibility that reservations will be merged if you go down to front desk in the morning, check out – pay for your room, get the bill and only afterwards say that your partner has a separate reservation and would like to stay in the same room.

Except that at many hotels you've "automatically" paid your bill (it's under/on your door), and there's only one step left: Turning in your key.

So there's no settling up your bill part!

Except: If you then say my partner would like the same room, they can reopen the bill!

Furthermore, what's the point of the same room if you can't keep your stuff in there? But you can't keep your stuff in there if you're only going to ask about having the same room after you already "checked out"!

Meanwhile, if you keep it totally separate, they can claim that they still have to clean the room, and that it's thus not yet available. Only by linking the reservations can they certainly keep the room not cleaned and issue it to someone else (your spouse is technically someone else until you reveal they're not!).

Gosh, seems like a whole lot of work for some high risk (losing 8000 points) and little reward (you may have to spend some time with no room at all after all).

It seems simpler (as well as safer!) to me to decide ahead of time to have the partner check in independently (so the staff has no chance to link you), you try to get a late check-out on your room, your parnter try to get an early check-in on their room, and move the stuff quietly between the rooms.


... On a side note, are you aware the "settling up" is never as final as it seems? No matter how much you think you "settled up", the bill is able to be re-opened, for example, if they later discover an incidental charge which had not yet hit at the time you checked out. (Including an erroneous incidental charge, which you discover only when your credit card statement shows a higher amount than you had "settled", and you call to find out why, and they research it. And, yes, that's happened to me!)

So if they can adjust your bill after you've "settled" it to add an incidental charge, they can re-open your bill after you've "settled" it to add "another night after all"! (I've done that too. In that case, there wasn't a downside to having the extra night be merged, so I didn't care. It was a case of me finding out my flight had gotten delayed a day right after I'd "settled" and they reopened the bill and added an extra night. But it proves they can do it!)

other channels?
 

I am a Platinum with them and the T&C says: "Elite Diamond and Elite Platinum members can book through any channel" I thought to myself, wow, I can book through expedia, and get their points along with choicehotels! I called choicehotels customer support, and the agent said, that actually no, by "any channels" they mean that you call the hotel directly, or just walk-in. Well, isn't that not ANY channel?

Another thing: "you will be awarded enough bonus points to reach the 8,000 point level". Huh? Will they award 8000 points or bump you up to 8000 if you had, say, 7500 points? What if I have 400,000 points? If they give you 8000, why don't they just say so?

1. That 'book through any channel' is misleading, if not an outright lie.
If one books through other online travel agencies, one does not get any rewards.

2. For 2 stay if one earns 1200 choicepoints, then Choice adds the balance required of 6800 to get the total upto 8000 points.

Yes, they should have said "Any channel which actually earn CP points"

It means if you spend for example 100$ (50$x2) and so earn 1000 points they'll give you 7000 points as a bonus (plus, your Platinum bonus which should be 250 points in this case).

The problem is in the definition of the word "channel". To the hotel industry, it means a means of booking a room, not the specific place you book the room online.

So channels includes:

booking through a website
booking through a central reservation number
booking through a corporate travel agent
booking through the hotel over the phone
walking up to the hotel

But "booking through a website" is only one channel. That channel, in turn, has restrictions on it: The website must be a Choice website. Other website are not other channels, there's other subsets of the same shannel (booking through a website).

Yes, it would be nice they defined the term "channel" somewhere online, rather than expecting you to know it (since most people don't know it correctly).

But their point in empahasing this (for people who understand the issue) is that they want to entire business people to stay enough with choice to earn high-enough status to be able to use corporate travel agents to book their Choice stays and still earn the promos. They want people who don't have enough status yet to have limitations, which makes them want to stay enough to get status. (But some corporate travel bookers -- who aren't technically travel agents -- at smaller companies use Expedia or whatever, in those cases it doesn't count either. So it's not all that easier to explain clearly exactly which "corporate travel agents" count.)

Choice assumes you understand that you can't earn a bonus if you don't earn points in the first place, and it already explains in the T&Cs that third-party online sites don't earn points.

Silly assumption on their part. You just earned 0 points. And since this offer tops you up to 8K, they should give you 8K for 2 stays. 8K - 0 - 0 = 8K. If they meant point eligible stays they should have said so.

Maybe all sorts of companies should say all sorts of things, but to me it's perfectly obivous because I'm looking at the from the stand point of "what does the company probably mean by this", not "what do I wish they would mean this". Companies run promos because they work for them; it's your job to figure out how to make them work for you.

Companies love nothing more than people signing up for a promo the company won't have to pay out on because the people didn't figure out how to work the promo correctly. The point of the promo (from the standpoint of the company) was to drum up business, and people who didn't figure out how to work the promo correctly but stayed anyway achieve the goal of the promo (from the standpoint of the company)!

You're already ahead because you're reading FlyerTalk. All the information is here, even if it's not clear at choicehotels.com. I run into people all the time in line at Choice properties who misunderstand these promos completely, because just saw a TV ad, signed up, didn't read or research how the promo worked, and then booked a stay.

Perfect example: Durinag a verison of the promo that caled it "free nigh" (as opposed to "gas card") but of course again was just 8000 points: I was checking in (on a paid rate) at a hotel with is something like 20k/night, and the person in front of me asks the clerk that since this is her 2nd stay, will she but it's several nights, will she be able to use her free night later in this stay. The clerk had no clue was she was talking about, but I having heard this explained to her that, no, the points toward the free night won't post until several days after she checks out.

But what I didn't realize until later was that she also misunderstood that "Free night" didn't apply at that hotel, because "free night" was only really at 8000-point hoetls, and this was far from one! So that's at least two things she misunderstood about the promo.

But the "any booking channel" only applies to people who are elite enough, you would hope that by the time they reach that point (hopefully from actually staying at Choice hotels a lot, not from some status match), they already know much better how it works than leisure-only travelers who sign up only because of TV ads. (And Choice runs lots of those TV ads!!!)

In general, this points/miles based world is so full of confusing rules, I don't see how anyone can hope to maximize points/miles earning without doing reserach up front on what counts and what doesn't count, and/or using their "gut" and acting very conservatively (ie, if they think it possibly might not count, assume it doesn't count until you verify otherwise!), at least where spending of real money is concerned. (It's less seirious if you misunderstand the rules somewhere where you didn't spend any real money, but on hotel rooms you presumably are spending real money.)

Bingo, bingo, bingo. Please folks, read this post and get the main point: hotels (and airlines and any other business that runs promos) do these deals to benefit their businesses--benefiting you is a (generally unintended) byproduct. It is your job to figure out the way to make this (or any other promo) work for you. And, if you're here on FT, the information is here; you just need the motivation to do the research.

It's why I get aggravated when I hear people dismiss Delta miles as SkyPesos (I agree that there's generally not much value, and it's one of the few FF programs in which I don't participate but there's some personal bias built in there because of my own bad experiences on Delta) or call BA's currency, Adios (a program I value, but at least partially because my personal experiences there have generally been good)--it's an easy way to say that these miles/points have no value when, in general, nearly every program has some sweet spot. Researching the resources here will help you find that sweet spot.

You wanna look smart? Use terms like SkyPesos and Adios. You wanna be smart? Figure out, from the resources here, how to make Delta, BA, and Choice (and any other program) work for you.

Compared to some of the other forums here, we seem to be blessed with some folks just brimming with common sense and the willingness to share it. ^

I agree that what the should do and what they do do are two different things and that it's your job to figure out how to make them work for you. Should is should and reality is different.

Being Elite doesn't mean someone understands the program, etc. A lot of business travellers don't bother learning all the ins and outs of the programs because they are more focussed on their job, not the hotel they are staying at. While they can learn lots at FlyerTalk, the learning curve is steep and doesn't always give an immediate payback. And if they are in different programs, they can get confused by the different meanings each uses. A "free night" from Best Western promos is a free night at any hotel. A "free night" at Choice is 8000 points which is a free night at certain hotels.

I also realize there are those who argue that if this were easy and anyone could do it, then the promotions would have to be less generous. So in their view, all the limitations of the the promotions *should* be hard to figure out.