Reward Night Availability
 

Hello,

Sorry I haven't had much involvement with the Choice program so I apologize if this has been addressed elsewhere. I'm considering purchasing some points via Daily Getaways for an upcoming trip. I currently have no points in my Choice account. When I do a search using points it gives the number of points necessary per night (16,000 for an example) and that I don't have enough points. Are there capacity controls on reward nights? Is it likely that reward nights would be available if I had the necessary points in my account? Or is it a situation of just not knowing unless you have the necessary points available?

Thanks!

I'm not too sure, since I've never checked with no points in my account. However, due to a web site glitch, it sometimes forgets who I am and what I have in points (the message is Not Enough Points), but it still allows me to check out award availability.

Officially, there are no capacity controls or room type limitations - however, many of us have noticed that some rooms (suites, etc) are available for purchase but do not show up as available for awards. This varies by property.

The long and short of it is that Choice is not as vigilant as we might wish in enforcing their own rules.

I have never had any problems finding rooms with my points. Of course, I have no way of knowing how many rooms Choice makes available for reward nights.

I have been a user of Choice points for some time and mostly like the program. I even carry the Choice Visa. I typically redeem for 8000 - 10000 point stays. Very much at basic hotels in small towns. I don't care as much for redemptions in majur tourist spots. I find those are typically 16,000-20,000 points a night.

I've bought Daily Getaway points for 2 years now and will buy again next week. For an 8,000 point redemption, it works out to $30 a night. So decent.

I want to buy different hotel chains this year just for more diversification since Choice is really not good in tourist hotspots.

First, I'd like to welcome to the forum all the folks who've become active in the Choice Privileges program because they've just bought points on Daily Getaways. We've never taken a poll here, but it seems like about half the forum participants (including me) are here because of the Daily Getaways offer.

The key restriction on using Choice points is the "booking window" -- not blackout days. For domestic hotels, you're generally only allowed to book 30 days in advance. For int'l you get 60 days.

http://www.choicehotels.com/en/choic.../redeem-points

While these restrictions are usually manageable, they are a bit of a PITA because most of us make at least some of our travel plans further out in advance. One trick to get a longer booking window is to get status. With some quirks, Choice does "status match" to Platinum, which gives you a very useful 75 day booking window. I've gotten it done a few times, and it's worth the trouble to get it done. There's at least one thread in this forum which discusses the procedure.

Other than the booking window issue, Choice will generally give you "last room availability." So if you can buy the room, you can book it during your booking window. The only USA exception I've seen to this is certain premium rooms. Some Choice hotels won't let you book their fanciest rooms: hot tubs, suites, etc. Others will. Look for them when you're search a city's availability, because they represent free upgrades and the additional space can be useful if, for example, you're travelling with your family.

Overseas, there's sometimes an additional annoyance. I've seen hotels that only make their most basic room available for award redemption. Like at one Berlin hotel, it was their single-bedded room. If you wanted 2 beds, or needed room for 3, you were out of luck. Traveling in Australia, I encountered a similar problem at some of their hotels. I contacted the properties to see if I could at least pay for the "upgrade" -- the small difference between what they were selling the cheap room for and what the larger room cost. One hotel let me do this, and another said "no, you'll have to book 2 rooms." I've actually thought of complaining to Choice about this limitation on foreign award rooms, but it seems like Choice's overseas properties are managed by a different company, so "USA Choice" doesn't have much control over their allocation decisions.

I do pretty much the same. I've saved a lot of money over the years with Choice promos, credit card, and daily getaways deals.

I'm new to the program and am having trouble finding out how many points it takes to book a room.

Is there some sort of formula for converting dollars to points or some way to check for a specific hotel other than logging in and attempting a reservation.

I'm trying to plan a trip a few months out and the website won't show me any options?

When you view a particular Choice hotel's website (by clicking on the hotel name in the search results), there's a chart on there showing what the redemptions will be for the next few months.

For example, the Comfort Hotel Diana in Venice, Italy, on its webpage:
currently shows:
Unfortunately, you can't get visibillity beyond that. You can get some clues if you've been monitoring a specific hotel for a long time as to their yearly patterns, but otherwise you have to wait until they set the redemption rate for another few-month period (in the current case, for Sep 16-Dec 31, probably).

But there's no guarantee that not-yet-published redemption rates will be the same as the currently-published ones or previously-published ones. You can at best make educated guesses.

(Btw, given that the "cash" price for this hotel is often $200+/night, I'd say 10k a night is still a good deal, even if I got it a few years ago for only 8k a night.)

Thank you for the tip. It works great. ;)