Just a curiosity question.

How is the number of points for a free night set? Is it set by the property, or by Choice. How is the property reimbursed. What is the incentive to set a lower rate than a higher rate.

Hotels point values are related to:

1. location/high travel destination

2. age

3. amenities

4. season

This is true for all hotel chains....not just choice.

A couple of pages in to this thread has a reprint of Choice's official franchise rules, including how they are compensated for award stays.

IIRC, the rates are set by a regional manager. It turns out, it doesn't matter what the point rate is, the property gets compensated the same amount, so they don't really care what the rate is.

The incentive (from a corporate point of view) is that it makes their 8000 point promos actually reasonable (i.e., there will really be a lot of hotels you can get for 8000 points/night) and it provides people an opportunity to stay at Choice properties when they wouldn't normally do so.

You gotta love how this plays out in Europe, since a number of us (myself included) have taken advantage of the lower rates to score exceptional deals.

Not quite true. Not all hotel chains change their point values from season to season the way Choice does. Many hotel chains use a system of "tiers", and once a hotel is assigned a tier, it stays in that tier (and thus requires a fixed number of points) until and unless it gets moved to another tier (which tends not to happen more than once a year, if that).

What other hotels do to deal with high demand season is limit availabiility, rather than change the points rate. Choice, by contrast, tends to change the points rate rather than limit availability.