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-   -   Choice Hotels in Ecuador (https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/choice-choice-privileges/1971616-choice-hotels-ecuador.html)

iahphx May 28, 2019 8:19 am

Choice Hotels in Ecuador
 
To my surprise, Choice has 2 well-regarded Ascend hotels in Ecuador: one outside of Quito and the other in Guayaquil. Sounds like a great place to use your Choice points if you're headed to Ecuador. Right? Wrong.

Room rates at the Quito property start at $98. But they want 20,000 points. If you want to pay with points and cash, it's 6000 points and $105! In Guayaquil, award stays are also 20,000 points but room rates are in the $70s. Also $105 and 6000 points.

Oh, well. If history is any guide, we could be waiting quite some time for Choice to "fix" this. I assume there is no one who I could "complain" to?

lougord99 May 28, 2019 12:59 pm

Fix what? Points plus cash is simply buying points. Points plus cash will always be 6,000 points plus $105 for a 20,000 point stay regardless of what the cash rate is

iahphx May 28, 2019 2:25 pm


Originally Posted by lougord99 (Post 31146641)
Fix what? Points plus cash is simply buying points. Points plus cash will always be 6,000 points plus $105 for a 20,000 point stay regardless of what the cash rate is

"Fix" the absurd 20,000 points required for a hotel whose rooms sell for under $100. It's more expensive to buy the points than just pay for the room!

jebr May 28, 2019 10:57 pm

Based on the Choice website, it seems as though the points price is relatively set for a season (with fluctuations for weekday vs. weekend.) It's quite possible that you're looking at a lower-cost time within that period, or that the hotel is higher during certain seasons but doesn't adjust down their points rate during the off season.

The only way to "fix" it would be to go to a straight revenue-based system for points redemptions. That means there's no chance for outsized value. Much better to have some oddities where points simply don't make any sense than to eliminate sweet spots within the system entirely.

sdsearch Jun 1, 2019 11:52 am


Originally Posted by iahphx (Post 31146983)
"Fix" the absurd 20,000 points required for a hotel whose rooms sell for under $100. It's more expensive to buy the points than just pay for the room!

Ba careful of what you wish for. The only way to "fix" it would be make awards always proportional to the room rate. Would you really like that "fix", which would take away all good-value redemptions? :confused:

The whole reason you can find good value redemptions sometimes is because they don't the change redemptions to match the room rate on a daily basis. They set the redemptions on a roughly "quarterly" basis, based on who knows what (perhaps the worst case cash rates of that quarter, which may be the week you want to visit). For example, in some areas in coastal California that redemption rates shoot up for July and August, even though the last week or two of August the cash rates in some not-right-at-the-coast locations tend to plummet (because too may schools restart by then, I guess?). Meanwhile the redemption rates in the same area are low for spring, even including Spring Break weeks when cash rates can shoot up, because again their calendar is not that "fine tuned".

So stop wishing for them to "fix" it, and start learning how to get maximum advantage out of these "imperfections" (from their standpoint) of award pricing.


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