(EXPIRED) Choice Hotels: Stay Twice & Earn 5,000-7,200 Bonus Points, Option To Redeem For $50 Gift Card

Choice Hotels is once again offering its familiar promotion that gives 5,000-7,200 bonus points when staying with them twice during the promo period.

The Deal

• Stay twice with Choice Hotels & earn 5,000-7,200 bonus points. During the promotion period you’ll also have the option to redeem 8,000 points for a $50 gas gift card.
• Direct link to registration.

Key Terms

• Registration required 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 01/18/2022 and 03/12/2022.
• 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) 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 their 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 01/18/2022 through 03/12/2022. Beginning 03/13/2022, the $50 gift cards will return to their standard redemption rate of 16,000 points.

Quick Thoughts

In case you’re not familiar with how this type of Choice Privileges promotion works, after you stay twice within the promotion period Choice will award you bonus points to ensure that when combined with the base points you earn on your stays, you end up with at least 8,000 points.

They market is as a promo offering 5,000-8,000 bonus points, but that’s not true. The minimum number of bonus points you’ll earn is 5,000, so even if your spend/length of stay earns you more than 3,000 points, you’ll still earn 5,000 bonus points despite the total coming to more than 8,000 points.

While that 5,000 figure is correct, the 8,000 point figure isn’t. As listed in the terms, award stays don’t count and paid stays have to cost at least $40 before taxes and fees. You have to stay at least twice, so if you happened to find a rate that was exactly $40 and booked two separate stays, you’d end up with 800 base points. That means the most bonus points you can earn is 7,200 because that’ll top you up to the 8,000 points threshold.

There’s an additional element to this promotion because during the promotion period Choice is providing the opportunity to redeem 8,000 points for a gas gift card. The full terms on the registration page make reference to a Shell gift card, so I’m not sure if that’s the only eligible gas brand or if you can also redeem 8,000 points for the other gas gift card brands they carry:

• Shell
• BP
• Chevron/Texaco
• Speedway
• Sheetz
• Sunoco

8,000 points for a $50 gas gift card isn’t a great redemption because you can occasionally find award nights at non-cockroach infested Choice properties for that amount, but it’s also not a terrible redemption either if your points would otherwise sit there and ultimately expire.

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