Choice is a little strange in that you can't book (domestic) awards more than 30 days in advance, and 60 days internationally.

I'm not sure if that 60 days applies to Preferred Hotels or not, but since you mention it, I have enough for one night so maybe I should try booking it.

My current plan is to get enough Choice points for 2 nights in London and I'm about 2/3 of the way there right now. I was planning on having to wait for the two months out, but maybe not.

At any rate, their literature says no blackout dates, no capacity controls, just like the regular Choice properties. However -- I have noticed that, for those Choice properties that have things like suites, your are not offered them when you try to book an award. I would assume with Preferred, you would just be offered a standard room. OTOH, for a lot of these places, that might well be good enough.

Incidentally, there was a thread in the Other Hotels forum asking this very question, and IIRC, there were no definitive answers. Check it out here.

I'll report back what I find out.

Only being able to book 60 days out for Preferred might be a deal breaker as I would assume that most of the better Preferred properties might be full that close to arrival dates. Please report back when you find out all the details!

In London I noticed that the Plaza on the River Club and Residences looked very nice for 30k. http://www.plazaontheriver.co.uk/index.html Reviews on Tripadvisor are also pretty good! The Landmark and Lanesborough are 50k so you could almost get two nights at the River Club for the price of one night at the other properties. I think it's pretty funny that you can use Choice points for a stay at the Lanesborough but you cannot use SPG points there since it doesn't participate in SPG.

I spoke with the Choice Customer Service tonight.

1. Booking was easy - just give them the date(s) and if they can find availability, you got it.

2. Preferred only provides them a certain class of room -- no suites, here. So, if they room is not available, you won't get one. However, these are not cheap properties, so it's a reasonable bet there will be at least one room open. No guarantees, though.

3. The Landmark is 40,000 points/night. The Lanesborough, for some reason, didn't show up, but that may be because I don't have 50,000 points yet.

She also mentioned that, from time to time, they run a promo whereby all Preferred Hotels go for 20,000 points per night. The last one was in February.

I'll be sure and keep my eye open for this one!

Is there anyone going after Preferred awards through points collected through credit card spending? It appears that Diners has an advantage over the BofA Visa card (2.4 points/$CC vs 2.0), but there's the annual fee on Diners. I also read that Diners can be used anywhere a MC is accepted, and that transfers to airlines now have a fee - but I didn't see one for the hotels. I just don't know much about the Diners program (or Choice, for that matter).

The list of Preferred hotels is impressive - I'm looking for more high-end award possiblities. I have enough points with Hilton and Starwood to last me for a while, and I'm looking fo another option.

I have a hard time imagining anyone who's got the BofA Choice Visa and is only using it for non-hotel spending. In fact, I use it ONLY for hotel spending when it gets me a bonus, since I find 2 points worth so much less than 1 mile.

And that gets back to the other question: You presumably have no high-value use (such as upper-class awards or upgrades on international travel) for miles, where the miles would be worth many cents on the dollar. Because when used that way, I'm not familiar with any way that 2.4 points can be worth as much as 1 mile.

So, having said that: I use Diners as my primary card, but because of the flexility of being able to transfer to so many airline programs. (Yes, it's fewer US programs now than before, but the US programs I belong to that left I earn more miles from hotels, dining, and bonuses of various kinds than from credit card anyway.) Want to fly to Iceland where only IcelandAir goes but want to upgrade? Diners can do it. Next year want to upgrade on some completely different airline elsewhere in the world (that allows upgrades with miles, without having to be elite)? Diners can do it.

Diners' flexibility is also good when you want to TOP OFF some program (airline or hotel) that you've gotten CLOSE to an award with through your other-than-spending activity.

I suppose you could use it for hotel points only, but I don't know if anyone else does (other than for top off). There's a separate forum here at FT for Diners, you might ask that specific question there. (Don't limit it to Preferred, you want to start out finding if anyone finds it worth to use Diners for nothing but ANY hotel's points.)

(And even when you don't have any use for miles, always remember: The benchmark to do the math against is a no-annual-fee cashback card. If you can earn more in 1% cashback -- to then spend for paying for a Preferred Hotel night outright -- than you earn with only a credit card toward free Preferred Hotel stays, why be limited by points you can't decide later to use for something else and/or a high annual fee?)

Oh, one more thing: Baymont. Baymont abruptly left the one points program and emerged a month later in another points program earlier this year. And this is not the first time something like that has happened. If you get a BofA Choice Visa with no interest in staying at Choice hotels, only Preferred, and then before you can spend the $$$$$ to earn an award Preferred drops out, then what? (At least with DIners you can still use them for Hilton or Starwood or Intercontinental or Hyatt. And at least with cashback you can use it for ANYTHING.)

I've heard from various folks that Choice, when played right, can yield some of the best ROI in terms of award value. I think their properties are fine for what they are, but my problem is that I never book them in advance. If I'm staying in that type of property, I have probably only called ahead from 30 miles away at most (to confirm availability) - or I just pull off the highway, walk in, and ask. So I'll stay in a Choice hotel because the building looks clean and new, but I simply don't do it enough to pay attention to the rewards program. (Yes, I know that it is very un-FT-like to leave even 1 free room-night over the course of 2-3 years on the table... )

I wasn't aware of Choice's high-end props in Europe, but Europe is the one place where we purposely get away from the points/miles game. We stay in local places - mom & pop boutiques, that kind of thing. It's refreshing to escape the standard American hotel chain world for a little while.

So...I play the Marriott, Hilton, and Starwood systems for all of my business travel, plus my U.S. leisure travel. Marriott is the primary place I stay on business, HH Amex is my primary credit card for my first $20k of annual general spending, SPG Amex is my primary credit card beyond that. I am usually able to keep healthy balances in all three, which gives me good diversity and helps protect me if one of the three undergoes a major overnight devaluation.

Devaluation happens with all programs, but the way it happens with hotel is a little easier to swallow than with airlines. With hotels, the primary mechanism is Category Creep. You can still get your room, but this year it's 12,000 points instead of last year's 10,000 points. With airlines, the primary mechanism is that the award seat is just flat-out unavailable unless you are willing to completely change your planned trip (dates, destination, etc.). In 2006, avg. airfares are up 7% or whatever, but there's no way for them to creep up award levels by 7%. The seats are simply much harder to get.

So in that sense, I'd say that's an advantage for the hotels, as long as you are earning & burning. If the avg. lifespan for each of your points is a year or so, you probably have time to react to major changes and shouldn't get burned too hard by Category Creep. 2006 is a strong travel year, avg. room rates are up, and all three of the biggies "crept" quite a bit. But Marriott and Hilton have both been ratcheting up the points you earn on stays, so that takes a little bit of bite out. Starwood operates primarily with targeted promotions, which is why I minimize my revenue stays there - unless, of course, I'm targeted. The loss in earnings by not being targeted is too severe.

Partially true. I'll use miles for international biz class awards or FC domestic awards, but I don't buy coach tickets and upgrade with miles. I don't view domestic FC awards as a high-value use. I also use them for hotel awards - I think Starwood awards give me more bang for the buck than domestic FC awards.

I have Starpoints and Membership Rewards points for this.

Good idea. I haven't paid a whole lot of attention to Diners in the past few years.

These may not be mom-and-pop boutiques, but they're certainly not cookie-cutter properties either.

* * *

I agree entirely. There are a lot of unique properties among the chains in Europe. In Paris, I've used several of the Holiday Inns. It's easy booking on the website, it keeps the points/status coming and the only way you would know you are in a Holiday Inn would be the signage and soaps, etc.

Well, there's multiple ways to look at it, and it all depends a lot on the specific program.

12k points instead of 10k points? I wish!!!

For several years, the top value (aside from a few many-night stays at select resorts in a few parts of the world) in the Hilton HHonors program has been that ALL Scandics (mostly northern Europe) have been 10k a night. Come this October, they're changing to 4 categories, 10k, 20k, 25k, and 30k.

Other than the fact that some fraction those Scandics will stay at 10k, all I can see is 50% to 200% "creep"!

And this is all I see because all the other hotel programs I earn miles (or transfer points to miles periodically, in cases where that earns me more miles than earning them directly). But at HHonors, it's "double dip", and while you can choose to change from Points+Miles to Points+Points, you can't choose Miles+Miles. (And I just barely requalify for elite, so I can't afford to "burn" when it's not a great value. And you need to be high enough elite in HHonors to be able to get good award reservations.) So I've accumulated 100s of k of HHonors points because I couldn't see good values for them until I started traveling to Europe. But come this October, again, it's 50% to 200% creep for most Scandic locaitons.

Ok, so let's look at the other program where I collect points now (because they devalued their transfer to miles by up to 90% over the past year!): Priority Club. All HI Express locations used to be 10k, then about a year ago a giant chunk of them became "special destinations" and got a 100% creep (20k). Again, I'd LOVE to see only 20% creep, but I never do. (The remaining value is 11k for any Candlewood night, but then in a lot of locations Candlewood is very cheap in dollars too, so the trick is to find a location and time where 11k is worth more than paying outright for the Candlewood.)

Meanwhile, my primary airline is AA, and my use of miles there is for upgrades (again, because I just barely requalify for elite each year, I can't afford to "burn" for outrigh award trips). There was one "creep" of sorts a couple years ago when they introduced the co-pay. But if anything, that kept upgrade award inventory avialable, so I haven't noticed the availability creep that you speak of.

Also, keep in mind that at most all airlines outright award seats on ALL flights are available for a VOLUNTARY 100% "creep": In other words, what most people think of as "normal" award (25k domestic coach, etc) are simply just "sale" or "saver" awards, and the official "standard" awards (with few capacity controls) are almost always available at double that. (That hasn't affected me one way or the other, again, because I've only used miles for upgrades so far, except at Southwest where everything's completely different anyway.)

Well, that's where some of my favorite Starwoods went. Cat 4 to Cat 5. Some others went from Cat 3 to Cat 4 - 7k to 10k. If they make it to Cat 6, then you really pay the piper. 20k per night.

True, although I've never stayed at a Scandic and probably never will. My impression was that Scandics have, to this point, been very undervalued as compared to the rest of the brands, and now they are simply being categorized similarly to the rest of the program. It's the end of a nice loophole but it's not the death of HH program.

Gold is high enough, and they hand that level out like candy. Use the CC for a couple of months, or sometimes just have the right promo code. Diamond is the only elite level in the HH program that you actually have to earn in the hotels.

Yeah, that used to be my gameplan. AA has always been my primary airline. But my favorite was the transatlantic upgrade, and that was the one they took off the board (without co-pays).

True - the 50k awards can represent good value if you need a very high-priced ticket. On airlines that allow same-day / next-day redemption, I've done a couple over the years.

Gold is only high enough since very recently. It used to be only the "Diamond Force" that could widely open up award availability. It's only been this year that they've extended the "no blackouts" down to Gold.

Meanwhile, do they really hand out Gold for no stays for year-after-year REqualification? My experience with HHonors for the past few years is that EVERYTHING is targeted, and they decide what they want to target you with, and if they don't want to target you with an easy REqualificaiton, they don't. (And while there's a lot of hype in the HHonors forum about some offer just for FT members to exchange one targeted promo for another, read down the newer pages of the thread and find out about how this isn't working for anyone! The person who posted it seems to have vanished.)

So far HHonors keeps giving me the most useless (to me) thing: Double or triple points after double or triple points. So all I end up with (if I stay there) is more points I cannot figure out how to use. I'd stay more if they let me requalify for fewer stays or get double miles instead, but no, just more points and points and points, which I don't know I'll use for after October. (Before, besides using them for the Scandic "loophole", I was saving up for Salt Lick. But that's gone too. I have no use for awards which are 6 days in a row in the same location on some beach, I'm into exploring the world, not lounging around, on my vacations. And when in Rome, I want to bit in the city, not in some remote place in the boondocks, no matter how nice the place and its immediate boondocks.)

Scandic may have been a loophole, to be sure. But the problem is that every other "non-loophole" place where I look at an HHonors award, it always seems to be a very poor value compared to theoretical Point Stretchers and such, but the Point Stretchers never mesh with my travel plans. That feels not so much like redemption "creep" as "redemption bait and switch" to me!

Sure...you can requal year after year just by using the HH Amex. I figure - worst case - I'll do that for a couple of months per year (then go back to my normal card, the SPG Amex). But sometimes they get loose with promo codes for completely free Gold status.

It makes me wonder if the new enhanced award availability for Golds is sustainable, long-term. Anybody who wants Gold can get it without really doing hotel stays. Anybody who wants a large pile of HH points can get them quickly through a variety of means. Seems like there is a danger on the horizon that too many people will be redeeming too many rooms. I know Starwood has a system in place to compensate properties well when peak occupancy award rooms are redeemed. I wonder if HH has something similar. (They must, right?)

For people who do actually do hotel stays, they're earning 30 to 45 points per dollar. The HH program went through a big devaluation about 3 years ago. I hope they aren't set up for another big one.