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Want to earn more points with your next Choice Hotels booking? Choice Privileges members can now purchase bonus Privileges points during booking. You can choose between 1,000, 2,000, or 5,000 extra points per night. Here’s how it works and why you'll probably want to avoid it.
Purchase up to 5,000 Bonus Choice Points at Booking
Choice Hotels now offers a way to purchase extra points when you book a stay, letting members buy up to 5,000 points per night. This is similar to programs from other brands, like IHG’s option to buy Elite Qualifying Points at checkout.
At checkout, members can choose to add 1,000, 2,000, or 5,000 bonus points per night. The option appears on the “Select a Rate” page of the checkout process near the bottom.
You can apply this to up to two rooms per reservation. If you're booking more than two rooms, you can make separate reservations to purchase points for additional rooms.
Members will receive any purchased points within 72 hours after checkout. If you purchase points with two separate bookings (for more than two rooms), you will receive the purchased points within 10 days of checkout for the additional rooms. And these points are not elite qualifying.
Is It Worth Buying Choice Points During Booking?
In short, probably not. That's because Choice is effectively making you pay extra for the privilege of buying Choice points at checkout.
Choice seems to be basing the cost of these bonus Choice Privileges points packages on the non-member Flexible Rate for the stay. However, this isn't the cheapest rate. Instead, members can generally save on a stay by booking a member rate, selecting the “Pay Now and Save” option, or utilizing a Choice Hotels promotion to save even more on a stay.
Let's take a stay at the Quality Inn & Suites Tampa-Ybor City as an example. Choice Privileges members can book this stay for as cheap as $256.72 for a three-night stay by using the End of Summer Sale flexible rate:
In this case, travelers shouldn't pay more to book a Flexible Rate as the End of Summer Sale provides free cancellation. However, this listing gives us a critical data point: a total cost of $315.05 for a non-member Flexible Rate.
Scrolling down, we will see that it's this rate that Choice is using to base the cost of the points packages. 1,000 bonus points per night costs a total of $333.77. When compared to the non-member Flexible Rate, that's an additional cost of $18.72 for 3,000 bonus points — or 0.624 cents per point.
Similarly, the package to get 2,000 bonus points per night costs a total of $352.50. That's an increase of $18.73 from the 1,000-point-per-night package — netting the same 0.624 cents per point rate.
A rate of 0.624 cents per Choice point would be enticing. But that's only when you compare the cost vs. a non-member Flexible Rate. If you compare the cost of the 1,000-point package ($333.77) vs. the member End of Summer Sale rate ($256.72), you're paying $77.05 more for just 3,000 bonus points. That's an awful rate of 2.57 cents per Choice point.
That per-point rate drops as you buy more points, but it's still not compelling. The total cost of the 2,000-point rate ($352.50) is $95.78 more than the End of Summer Sale rate. Dividing that extra cost by the 6,000 bonus points, you're still paying 1.6 cents per Choice point.
Even when you ignore the End of Summer Sale and compare the 2,000-point rate ($352.50) vs. the member Flexible Rate ($299.89), you're paying $52.61 more for 6,000 bonus points. That's a better, but still lacking, rate of 0.88 cents per point.
Our Take
Choice Privileges members can now purchase bonus points at checkout. The purchase rate is attractive when compared with a non-member Flexible Rate. However, that's not the rate you should be paying. At the very least, Choice Privileges members should select the member rate. And the cost of adding bonus points at checkout drops no lower than 0.88 cents per point compared to this rate.
For reference, AwardWallet users have redeemed Choice Privileges points for an average of 0.6¢ each. That means purchasing points at 0.6¢ cents each (or more) won't be a good deal unless you can personally redeem the points more than that, and have no cheaper way to earn them.
If you're looking for better ways to earn Choice points, Choice has offered sales on Choice points as cheap as 0.62 cents each, plus promotions that award bonus Choice points on eligible stays. These alternatives might be more cost-effective than paying a higher nightly rate just to buy extra points.
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