(EXPIRED) Choice Hotels Promo: Stay Twice & Earn 8,000 Points, Option To Redeem For $50 Gift Card

Choice Hotels has launched a new promotion which works much like their promotions year-round as you’ll earn at least 8,000 points when staying twice within the promotion period.

They’ve added another element this time though as you can redeem those points for a $50 gift card for brands like Amazon.

The Deal

• Stay twice at Choice Hotels properties and earn 5,000-8,000 bonus points.
• Direct link to registration.

Key Terms

• Registration required at www.choicehotels.com/deals/gift-card before checking out from your first qualifying stay.
• The promotion is only available to members of the Choice Privileges Rewards Program who register for this promotion, and then make two separate qualifying stays at participating hotels (WoodSpring Suites hotels and Ascend Hotel Collection all-inclusive resorts, among others, are not participating) with arrival between 09/21/2020 and 11/15/2020.
• A “stay” is any number of consecutive nights at one hotel regardless of check-ins or check-outs. A “qualifying stay” is a stay that is during this promotion at a participating hotel through a qualifying channel (see Qualifying Channel, below) that is eligible to earn Choice Privileges points.
• Most stays are eligible to earn Choice Privileges points EXCEPT: rooms booked at rates below $40 USD per night, certain hotel initiated promotions, reward night stays, complimentary rooms, rooms paid for as part of a convention or meeting, rooms booked through a third party online retailer including online travel agencies, wholesale packages, group tours, and stays booked using the employee discount or the friends and family discount.
• Stays at Choice Hotels properties in the following countries are excluded from this promotion: Japan, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Guyana, and Ecuador.
• You must maintain an address in the U.S. (includes U.S. territories) or Canada to be eligible.
• Qualifying Channel: Members must book stays via ChoiceHotels.com, the Choice Hotels® mobile app, or 800.4CHOICE. Stays directly booked through Book by Google are also eligible, if the member adds his/her Choice Privileges number to the reservation prior to check-in. Corporate travelers may book through their online booking tool, GDS, or with a travel agent; however, reservations booked through Egencia’s Preferred Rate Program do not qualify for promotional bonus points.
• Choice Privileges member number must be provided upon check-in.
• To be eligible to earn bonus points, members must set their earning preference to Choice Privileges points in their online account. Any change made to earning preference will remain in effect after the promotion has ended, unless the member changes it.
• Allow 72 hours from check-out for points to post.
• Request for bonus points made by members who did not register for the promotion will only be considered up to 60 days after the promotion ends; request thereafter will be automatically denied.
• Registered members will be awarded a minimum of 5,000 to a maximum of 8,000 bonus points after the second qualifying stay. The number of bonus points awarded depends on the number of base points earned from the two separate qualifying stays, with points varying by hotel. The total of base points plus bonus points awarded, however, will be at least 8,000 points, which is the number of points required to redeem for a $50 gift card from participating retailers.
• A selection of gift cards is available at the discounted redemption rate of 8,000 points from 09/21/2020 through 12/15/2020. Beginning 12/16/2020, the $50 gift cards will return to their standard redemption rate of 16,000 points.

Quick Thoughts

Choice Hotels doesn’t offer much variety by way of their promotions, but I guess it’s good that you pretty much always know what to expect from their offers.

This new promotion works much the same way as their promotions over the last few years, but with an additional element which they add in once or twice a year.

First up, you earn between 5,000 and 8,000 bonus points when staying with them twice during the promotion period. As highlighted in the past, the 8,000 bonus points figure is misleading because the most bonus points you can earn through this promotion is 7,200. That’s because you have to book a rate of at least $40 per night in order to qualify for bonus points. The Choice Privileges program offers 10 points per dollar spent, so if you booked two separate one night stays costing $40 per night, you’d earn 800 base points. This promotion will then bump up those earnings so that you end up with at least 8,000 points total, hence why 7,200 points is the highest bonus you can earn.

Choice guarantees you’ll earn at least 5,000 bonus points though so as not to give too much incentive to only book cheap stays. For example, let’s say you book two stays of four nights each that cost $100 per night. That would earn you 8,000 base points, so if they didn’t offer a minimum guaranteed number of bonus points, you wouldn’t earn a bonus at all. In that particular scenario, you’d earn 5,000 bonus points and so you’d end up with 13,000 points overall (not taking into account any additional points you might earn by having status with Choice).

Gift Card Redemption

As mentioned earlier, Choice occasionally adds another element to their promotion where you can redeem points for half the usually required amount. $50 gift cards usually cost 16,000 points, but during the promotion period you can get $50 cards for only 8,000 points.

Only select gift card brands are eligible for that 8,000 point redemption, but it includes a bunch of valuable brands like Amazon, Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Shell and more. The screenshot below shows all the eligible brands; note that it’s showing a 16,000 point redemption level right now because the 8,000 redemption option starts on September 21, 2020.

Redeeming 8,000 points for a $50 gift card gives you a redemption value of 0.625cpp which isn’t bad. However, it’s certainly possible to get better value from your points when redeeming them for free stays as we have their Reasonable Redemption Value (RRV) listed at 0.81cpp. Still, if you’re concerned about the 8,000+ points you earn from this promotion expiring before you’d have a chance to use them for a stay, being able to redeem them for a gift card like Amazon or Best Buy is a fairly solid backup plan.

Note that there are currently Amex Offers for Comfort Hotels and Cambria and Ascend, although Ascend all-inclusive resorts are excluded from this bonus point promotion. If you can book two separate one night stays costing $75 each including tax at one of these brands, you’d get $30 back as a statement credit from the Amex Offer, making your net cost $60 per night. Add in ~4% cashback through a shopping portal and the 8,000 points you’d earn from this promotion and you have the makings of a decent return for those two stays. It’s not going to be worth mattress running those two nights, but if you need to book a couple of cheap stays by November 15 anyway, Choice could be worth considering if there’s a decent enough property to stay at where you need.

Want to learn more about miles and points? Subscribe to email updates or check out our podcast on your favorite podcast platform.