screeton

An email today from Choice Hotels (Comfort Suites, Clarion, etc.) advises that it will no longer be possible to earn Southwest points for stays at their hotels after May 23, 2019. I do not stay at this brand regularly, but when I do, its nice to be able to accumulate Rapid Reward points since I would never accumulate enough of their proprietary points to get a night's stay. After May 23, I will be looking elsewhere. Of the remaining SWA partner hotels, does any give a better rate of RR points than the others?

lougord99

I hope you are aware that if you stay twice during many promotion periods, you get 8,000 points. The current promotion period is Feb. 26 to April 26.

argolfer

Peoriaman1

Eh, not sure I'll miss them. The properties are nice, sure, but since we're speaking specifically of the rewards program, I'll stick just to that. I stayed at a few Choice hotels and never got any RR points, not once. When I pursued the matter with Choice, all I got in return was a form email, saying points could not be earned since I'd booked through an outside website (in this case, Southwest), and not through Choice. The email was cheerily signed "Jenny" (or some other name, I don't remember). So when I responded and asked for a clarification (since Southwest's website specifically encourages booking through them), I got back the exact same email, this time cheerily signed "Carol" (or something like that). I don't think anyone was really drafting these emails.

LegalTender

SWA website:

Quote:

"To receive Rapid Rewards points for your stay, simply provide your Rapid Rewards account number at hotel checkin."

Seems RR account number isn't pre-coded in the reservation.

synergistic

I think, though I'm not sure, that booking through southwesthotels.com only gives you something like 2pts/$ for 'partner' hotels. You have to book through the hotel chain itself to get the 600pts/stay. Moot point now, of course. I haven't seen a single 600pt property show up on southwesthotels.com since the changeover. Honestly, with Choice, I value the 4000 Choice points higher anyway.

synergistic

And LegalTender points out that you need to give them your RR number upon checkin, which is rarely if ever successful for me when I book using a third party site, like booking.com, who runs southwesthotels.com. IMO, the only reason to use hotels to earn WN points now is to seek out bonus properties that give you 1000+ points and allow you to buy additional points at a little less than 2c a point. And even that is only worthwhile while you're chasing the Companion Pass, because the points aren't otherwise worth 2c apeice...

screeton

With only one or two exceptions, I rarely gather enough hotel points at any one brand to reach the "free night" level at even their less expensive properties, so getting a few RR points is better than nothing. No question that if you travel enough to use the points as hotel points rather than converting to airline points, its a more advantageous transaction for you and the hotel property. As for using the Southwest site for either hotel or rental cars, I never use that anymore. The rates are rarely competitive with what I can get direct from the source, and adding in discounts such as AARP or AAA can be more difficult. I didn't realize that booking.com ran the southwest hotels booking program, but that helps explains the less competitive rates.

Peoriaman1

I think a lot of them are only one point per dollar. Not really worth it I think, especially since I seem to gravitate towards the cheaper places.

I still earn 600 points each time by booking through the hotel's website, but that assumes that 1) I've already joined the hotel's rewards program, and 2) set my earning preferences there to "partner airline" points instead of hotel points. So far so good.

jfish26

I don't travel nearly enough to have meaningful hotel status, so I book everything through southwesthotels.com and select by point bonus. You can really clean up this way (and I very much hope this isn't cut off any time soon).

Deaf Flyer

ursine1

Radisson is a different brand, it's not part of Choice Hotels.

mmthomas44

Choice points are very valuable for Scandinavian hotels.

Peoriaman1

Wow, miracles never cease. I stayed at a Choice hotel a couple weeks ago, and I actually got my 600 points! That's a first....