This is huge! Choice Privileges has long partnered with Preferred Hotels & Resorts, and it has previously been possible, but usually very, very difficult, to book participating Preferred hotels with Choice points. Not anymore! It’s now very easy! You can now book Preferred hotels online with your Choice points!
Overview
Through Choice Privileges’ partnership with Preferred Hotels, over 300 Preferred Hotels can be booked with Choice points.
Basics:
- Point prices are fixed per hotel
- Hotel point prices range from 20,000 to 87,000 points per night
- You can only book base level rooms (but I’ve had success in the past calling the hotel to pay for an upgrade in advance).
- The cancellation policy is shown before you complete check-out. I just made a reservation where it showed that I can cancel for free up to 3 days before check in.
- Unlike Choice’s own hotels, you are not limited to booking within the next 100 days. I see availability out as far as a year with some hotels.
How to Book Online (Short Version)
- Browse here: www.choicehotels.com/ascend/preferred-hotels
Note: this looks similar but is NOT the same site we used to use to look for Preferred Hotels availability. - Log into your Choice Privileges account
- Click “Start Booking”
- Use the website’s filters to find the hotel you want
- If you have enough points for at least one night, you can click “Book Now” from List View to find available dates and to book the hotel.
- If you don’t have enough points for at least one night, switch to Map View to find your hotel and click “Book Now”. That will take you to the screen where you can find available dates.
How to Book Online (Detailed)
Step 1) Start by logging into Choice via a special page
Browse here & log in: www.choicehotels.com/ascend/preferred-hotels
If you’re not already logged into Choice, you’ll see a button in the middle of the screen asking you to “Sign in to Start Booking”. Click that button to sign into your Choice Privileges account (if you don’t already have a Choice account, create one for free).
Step 2) Press “Start Booking” and then search for hotels
Once you’ve signed into Choice Privileges, the button changes to “Start Booking”:
Click “Start Booking” and after a short wait, you should see something like this:
You can now use the site’s filters and sort feature to find hotels of interest to you.
Step 3) Click “Book Now” to see award availability
If you have enough points for at least one night at the hotel you’re interested in, then you should see a “Book Now” button. If you don’t have enough points, you’ll see “Buy Points” instead.
If that happens, an easy work-around is to switch to Map View and click on the hotel in the map. There you should see a “Book Now” button even if you don’t have any points:
Once you click “Book Now”, you’ll be brought to an availability calendar. Dates showing point prices (without an X through it) are probably available (but there’s one more step to confirm availability).
The final step for checking availability is to actually select dates in the calendar. Once you do, you’ll briefly see a message saying “Checking Availability with Hotel…” If the hotel is really available, that message will disappear and you can now book the hotel.
If the hotel is not really available, you’ll see something like this:
Error code 1200: We are sorry, there are no rooms available for the dates you have selected.
Step 4) Check availability without enough points
This solution was described above, but I’ll repeat it here in case you missed it. If you don’t have enough points to see the “Book Now” button, simply switch to Map View, click on the hotel you’re interested in, and click “Book Now.”
How to Get Choice Points
There are a few good ways to get Choice points quickly:
- Buy them when they’re on sale: check this page for current deals (there is currently a sale through April 9 2024)
- Transfer 1 to 2 from Citi ThankYou Rewards if you have the Citi Premier card or Citi Prestige.
- Transfer 1 to 2 from Wells Fargo if you have a Wells Fargo Autograph or Autograph Journey card
- Apply for a Choice Privileges credit card (details here)
It’s also possible to transfer 1 to 1 from Amex or Capital One to Choice but that’s usually a bad deal so I don’t recommend it.
Bottom Line
It has just become super easy to use Choice Privileges points to book Preferred Hotels! For ideas of great hotels to book, see: The worlds best Preferred Hotels bookable with Choice points (and yes, that post is a bit out of date, but I’ll work on updating it soon!).
A big thank you to reader Douglas who emailed us with the tip that these bookings are now available online!
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Looks like they have been devalued. 55k awards have now gone up to 70k-80k.
What a shame.
Does anyone know how to change the occupancy to 2 adults, 2 children when searching for PHR availability? It always defaults to 1 Adult, and I can’t seem to find a place to change it..
Nevermind, disregard…
All of the steps are working fine for me…up until the actual booking of the hotel… I select valid dates (2 months from now), click Continue, select the room type that’s available, click the checkboxes to agree to the Terms & Conditions, and click Complete Booking, at which point I receive, “Booking Error (501): There was a problem with your reservation. Please double-check your reservation details and try again.”
Thoughts?
Gets better now. I’ve tried twice talking to CSRs. Both times they swear that they’ve changed reservation systems and are unable to book Preferred Rewards hotels on their end. It can only be done online via the website.
Oh man that’s awful. I can’t think of a workaround. Did you try different browsers?
Only selective Preferred Hotels will show up and bookable with Choice points?
That’s correct. Not all Preferred Hotels participate in the Choice partnership
I think the map view trick is no longer working. I tried checking availability for three hotels and all I see are Xs.
Does it matter what browser you are using? I am using Google Chrome. Still not able to complete the process to book Preferred hotels.
I’ve booked multiple from Chrome. What happens when you try?
After step 2, when I click on “start booking” I get a page that says “Welcome Choice Privileges Members”. My landing page does not look like your example. There is not an option to begin a booking. I suspect it is “operator error” in that there is something that I am doing incorrect. Hope this helps. I will keep trying.
Greg – I finally found my “operator error” and can see the Preferred Hotels. Now I just have the find open dates for the hotels that I would like to book. And increase my Choice Privileges points bank.
Do you know what you were doing wrong before so that we can warn others?
First, I was not correctly following your instructions. I was not using the “sign in to start booking” per your screen shot, but rather Choice hotels sign in which also showed on the webpage. For some unknown reason I cannot access via my iPad, but I can access on my laptop. I hope the above explanation makes sense.
[…] In the old days, we had the Club Carlson hotel loyalty program. Where for a little while we could get a free night for every night we burned points for an award, it was glorious while it lasted. Then my memory gets a little foggy but somehow Radisson came into the picture. And burning these points for Radisson Blu stays was not bad until those too were devalued. And then Choice Hotels bought it and I have been trying to burn these hotel points ever since! To burn Choice points you can not book awards more than 100 days in advance which just blows. Anyway, maybe there is a chance to use these points now: Preferred Hotels now bookable online with Choice points! […]
They already changed the pricing on the Ajwa Sultanahmet from 35k to 55k
Can you make a Preferred Hotels booking for someone else using your Choice points? It’s an international booking, so I likely can’t do my usual “book for myself then call to add another guest”
I think so. The booking screen lets you enter any name as the primary guest.
[…] Hat tip to FM […]
This is a mess. Hotels randomly popping up depending on what landing page you have. I don’t have points in Choice so I can’t see availability for a certain hotel. When I go to the “check availability” link, it’s gone, but there are a bunch of other hotels that weren’t on the original page. Unsure how to lock in a date search. Seems like the page for that is broken?
[…] opportunity for redemption, but often a headache in actually executing it. It was well spotted by Frequent Miler that this now online. WAHOO! This is fantastic news and adds value to the following currencies […]
What am I missing? I went on the preferred hotels website and filtered by “Preferred Hotels & Resorts” brands to see all of their hotels. I then clicked the link above and logged into my Choice Hotels profile and searched every city from the PH&R list. I can’t find a single website bookable with choice points. The only non-motels I’m seeing are accends and cambria’s. What am I missing??
If you’re seeing Cambria hotels you went to the wrong place. Please follow the link in step 1 above under “How to book”
[…] HT: Frequent Miler […]
Does using Choice points for Preferred Hotels include taxes and fees or do we have to pay for those after the fact?
Looks like at least the Resort Fees are extra on a couple hotels that I pulled up. I assume taxes are included though like they are with all other programs.
It’s unclear. When I stayed at booked Cavallo Point a few years ago with Choice points I did NOT have to pay the resort fee. YMMV.
https://frequentmiler.com/cavallo-point-lodge-sausalito-bottom-line-review/