Anyone seen any promotions for Choice this quarter? Will be traveling quite a bit in Jan and Feb and don't want to miss out on any promos.

So far, nada.

Maybe they feel they've done enough to get the market share they need? Maybe they found out there are guys out there (you know who you are ) who will beat the snot out of these promos?

<shrug>

If they come back with a good one, I'm there. Until then ....

Then for the rest of January you might consider Priority Club (at their lower-cost propties like Holiday Inn, Express, and Candlewood Suites). They have a 4k bonus points every other stay, up to 40k max, starting January 14. Plus you may be able to get the "stay 4 earn 10k bonus" to work on top of that (see the 2008 bonus thread message 1 in the Priority Club hotel program section for the details). Although not quite as rich as Choice's "stay 2 earn 8k total" promos of the recent past, it is in the same vein that it gets you about the same amount of points on the cheapest hotels as it does on expensive ones. (And, similarly, you have to "hotel hop" to get the most bang for the buck. But, differently, after 20 stays you max out.)

Choice often doesn't announce promos until a couple weeks before they start, but at that rate it's not likely they'll have anything before late Jan or early Feb at least. (And if history is any precedent, it's likely to be 3x points/miles/credits this first quarter, rather than a fixed bonus amount like they tend to run in other quarters.)

But you can't count on that either, since they've already missed the window on repeating another promo that they did the past couple years (Dec-Feb discount awards at their Preferred/Summit luxury properties).

The big recent "promo" they had was one they didn't even realize they were running until "too late": They set up a 5k:25k transfer ratio from Amtrak Guest Rewards (when they really meant to do 5k:15k), not realizing that people were going to transfer tons of miles into AGR and then into Choice and (whether they kept them at Choice or transferred them on to Southwest) end up with much more value than they had with the original miles. So maybe that used up Choice's budget of "bonus points" for a while with that?

I think 2007's first program (Triple Rewards) was announced in January and started in Feb.

As others have pointed out in other threads, the addition of Econolodge and Rodeway could possibly have some effect on future programs, although that's all speculation at this point.