Is Choice Privileges imposing blackouts in major cities?
 

Checking October 1 and October 15 in New York City (Sunday nights, when demand is lower than most other nights), all hotels are showing "sold out" for points redemptions. Ditto London for those same nights, and some nights I checked in May. Is Choice imposing de facto blackouts in violation of program terms when the cash rates might make 30,000 points too good a deal?http://cdn.flyertalk.com/forum/image...thumbsdown.gif

Today being 4/24 and if you are Diamond member you could only book 100 days out for rewards stays. That would be max of August 2nd so the system shows sold out I assume for October.

Ah, yes, my bad. I do see availability within the specified time windows for my status.

It may not always show "sold out". I've seen a hotel showing for N points in August of this year a few days ago. I'm sure it wasn't bookable, no matter what your status, but doing a points search showed the number of points. I'm not sure why, because it shouldn't show that if I'm logged in and it's outside my booking window, and it should show "not enough points" if you're logged out, I would think. But it showed an actual number of points for a one-night stay (with a "book" button under it that I didn't try) for a night in mid-August. (I had tried doing a points search because I forgot for a moment that this was Choice and August was way too far away to book. The points search was just a "gut reaction" to seeing a high dollar rate and wondering if they had rooms on points.)

100 days from today is August 4, so it's conceivable that a Diamond member could book an August rewards stay today. Not sure exactly the dates you were looking at, though.

As I said, I was looking for mid-August. To me, August 4 is early August, not at all mid-August.

So it was definitely well over 100 days away.

Oh jeez. Long day yesterday - my apologies.

I'm seeing the problem for hotels in Copenhagen, DK in early to mid-August. Less than 100 days out, paid rooms available, but no award rooms showing available. I'm logged in to a Diamond Elite Status account.

This is a result of the game being played by some Nordic Choice hotels. The practice of blocking a large proportion -- or even most -- of the rooms from award redemption (at least using Choice Privilege points) has been spreading across more and more Nordic Choice properties.