...or was it just a coincidence that my membership number was my initials and then six numbers?

I'm staying at an Econolodge this weekend and so signed up for Choice, and sure enough my new number starts wtih my initials.

In any case I like it. Makes the number that much easier to remember!

Yes indeed, in most (if not all cases) it does, and it's been that way for many years (dating back to when it was called Guest Priveleges, and preceding your initials was a "GP-").

Nice feature.

You know, I'm still waiting for a frequency program to get with the times and allow unique user-defined membership numbers. Sure would be nice to be able to make them all the same...

Yeah, it does, huh?

Next time, I will know the first letter to enter so the browser (firefox) can automatically complete the rest.

My account (from the Guest Privileges era), is my initials followed by the month and day of my birth. Have they stopped using DOB in the membership numbers?

(When my mother's account was opened, somehow her middle initial was left out, and so she has an X in between her first and finial initial in her membership number. I don't recall how the account was opened--that was close to 10 years ago!)

QUOTE=kokonutz - ".. waiting for a .. program to .. allow .. user-defined membership .."

Most RewardsNetwork (iDine) -- except UA.

"Sure would be nice to be able to make them all the same..."

Roger that -- username -or- email ^ what's with requiring 16 freakin' digits; most credit-cards aren't near that anal.
/.

Ok, so now if we figure out your name and your birthday, we will know your CP number. Thanks for giving it away!

At any rate, it can't have always been month and day. Think about it, if John Q Public got an account and his identical twin James Q Public also got an account, they can't both have JQP followed by their identical birthdates, as then they'd both have the same account number!

So month and day of birth may have been one way they got the number, but it wasn't the only way. I have a card from that era, and I can figure out where they got the numbers, but it's definitely not related to my birthdate.

I wouldn't be surprised if it was a manual process back then, and the non-techhies doing it didn't have a random number generator handy , so they looked over the application and grabbed some digits from it and looked to see if that member number was available. If the first (simple) set of 4 digits they tried worked, they didn't try for anything more complicated. Otherwise they had to keep trying...

True...but it does appear to be their initial default. My father, mother, and I each have account numbers in the DOB format. The accounts were created between 1998-2001, but not all at once.

Where did they take the numbers from? Your address?

I think it was.
The application page from 1998 says that they will e-mail you your member number within one business day.
http://web.archive.org/web/200005101...v_app.html+CHI

What I miss are the uniform redemption rates...6,000 points for all US properties, except for Clarions (which were 7,000)--that went away with the rebranding.

By 2001 (with the rebranding to Choice Privileges), member number assignment was available instantly online.
http://web.archive.org/web/200109240...rivileges.com/

I do have to say that I was favorably impressed by my first Choice hotel experience in some time.

While I understand quality of properties can vary wildly, my rural experience compared VERY favorably to the bottom-end brands in the Hilton, Marriott and even Starwood families, particularly for the price.

^

You found a nice EconoLodge? This is indeed news, as I've found EconoLodge properties to be very consistent--consistently horrible. Where was the property?

Congrats...maybe I shouldn't be so categorical about avoiding Econolodge.

Welllll...maybe not so fast. It turned out it was a Comfort Inn, not an EL (since it was for a wedding I didn't make the booking myself and hadn't payed close attention to the actual property until I was getting ready to go....)


http://www.comfortinn.com/ires/en-US...fo?hotel=VA308

Comfortable beds, free wifi and breakfast all for $60 (heck, you cant even get the Internet and breakfast for $60 at most of the hotels I typically stay in!!!)! ^

Okay, I will continue my avoidance of EconoLodge.
But, while there are some real dumpy Comfort Inns, there are a lot of quite nice ones.

My GP number is my initials plus the last four digits of my home telephone number at the time I signed up for it.

I've got a friend in New Market & I've stayed at that one for a wedding before too. I think it's a Shenandoah Valley thing - the people in the region are just nice people. One of the best hotel experiences I've had was at the Sleep Inn in Harrisonburg. It blew me away - I was very impressed!

ROFLMAO...maybe this is getting a little bit like the movie The Number 23, but I went back and looked and realized that the digits after my initials are my birthday in the following format: month-day-month.

This is going to be the easiest frequency number to remember EVER! ^