You probably have heard of the name Choice Hotels, but very few people understand their loyalty programme (me neither). This is partly due to their weak present outside North America, and most of their hotels being in the middle or low end.
As you can see here, Choice Hotels is running a sale on point purchase at the moment. Through 16 August, you can enjoy 25% off if purchasing at least 3,000 points, and the maximum number you can buy is 180,000.
All options above 10,000 points are priced the same. You pay $74.25 for every 10,000 points, which is equal to roughly £59.
So is it worth it? As we mentioned early, Choice doesn’t have a lot of properties in Europe and most of them are meh. However, an exception is Northern Europe, where there is a separate programme called Nordic Choice.
Unlike Choice, Nordic Choice covers different spectrum of the market, including the top luxury band. Despite being separate programmes, they still have many connections, and you can book Nordic Choice hotels using Choice points.
This can, sometimes, represent exceptional value. The most renowned hotel in the group is the Thief in Oslo:
It easily sells for more than £400 during normal times, and still around £300 in the current tough situation. As you can see, it costs only 20,000 points (£108) to book it, which is around 70% off compared to a revenue stay.
It is an extreme example, of course, and you need to check specific hotels and compare both options to get an idea of what value you are getting. In general, look out for Ascent Hotel Collection if you want upscale hotels, as this is the top brand of the hotel group.
You may find this hotel familiar:
Klaus K was once a member of Design Hotels and you could book it via Marriott. I had a stay here in 2019 which was very pleasant. It’s a shame to see it leave Marriott and the 30,000 pricing is obviously too high.
There are also many mid-range hotels. For instance this Clarion hotel in Stockholm city centre:
The discount is roughly 50%, which is very impressive too.
Choice (not Nordic Choice) also has many budget hotels in Japan, which used to start from 5,000 points per night only. Unfortunately it seems to have risen to 8,000 points, and I didn’t see any significant advantage over the cash price at this time, so I will not talk about it today.
If this intrigues you, remember two things. First, 25% off is not the best offer ever – I think they ran a 30% off promotion quite recently. Daily Getaways is an annual event that offers insanely low price on Choice points, however it was cancelled this year, unfortunately.
Second, you can only book award nights 100 days out. If you buy points today for example, you won’t be able to lock a night next year right now.
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