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Want to stay at a Best Western hotel but don’t have enough points for a full award night? Best Western’s Pay with Points feature lets you use points to cover part of your stay, starting with as few as 5,000 points.
Here’s how it works — plus details on an ongoing promotion that lets you earn 2,000 bonus points every time you use Pay with Points.
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What Is Best Western Pay with Points?
Pay with Points allows Best Western Rewards members to partially pay for the first night of a stay using points. Redemptions start at 5,000 points and increase in 1,000-point increments, with every 1,000 points offsetting $5 toward the cost of the room.
As long as you have at least 5,000 points in your account, you can book a stay of any length and for any number of rooms. However, Pay with Points only applies to one room on the first night. The rest of the stay has to be paid in cash.
How many points do you need to use Pay with Points?
The Pay with Points option will only appear when booking if you have at least 5,000 Best Western Rewards points in your account.
If you don’t have enough points, Best Western allows you to purchase additional points at a rate of 1,000 points for $10. But this presents really poor value. Pay with Points only gives you $5 per 1,000 points, so you’d immediately lose half your money. At this point, it’s better to just pay in cash.
Can you still earn Best Western points on Pay with Points stays?
You’ll still earn Best Western Rewards points on the portion of your stay that you pay for in cash. General Best Western Rewards members earn points at a rate of 10X points per dollar spent.
For example, if you book a room for $80 and use 5,000 points to take $25 off the price, you’ll pay $55 in cash and earn 550 points once you check out.
Related: Best Western Rewards Elite Status Requirements: How to Qualify and the Perks You’ll Get
Which Best Western hotels accept Pay with Points reservations?
When Pay with Points launched, only a handful of hotels participated. Now, Best Western has expanded the program to all hotels in the U.S., Canada, and select international locations.
[Expired] Earn 2,000 Bonus Points with Every Pay with Points Stay
To encourage members to use the feature, Best Western is offering 2,000 bonus points every time you use Pay with Points. This promotion applies to Best Western stays in the U.S., Canada, and the Caribbean and is currently running through April 30, 2025.
Best Western has extended or relaunched this promotion multiple times, so there’s a good chance it will continue in some form. With the 2,000 bonus points, you’re effectively using 3,000 points to save $25, which brings the value of each point redeemed up to 0.83 cents instead of the standard 0.5 cents.
Related: All Current Best Western Promotions
Should You Use Best Western’s Pay with Points Feature?
On its own, Pay with Points isn’t a great deal since it values points at just 0.5 cents each. You’ll usually get better value for your points by saving up and paying for an award night in full. However, with the 2,000-point bonus, the math looks slightly better.
Whether it makes sense to use Pay with Points depends on the hotel, how many points you have, and whether you’re close to a full award night redemption. If you don’t have enough points for a free night, this can be a useful way to offset some of the out-of-pocket cost — especially with the bonus offer on the table.
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I am pleased that the AwardWallet adds a hotel like Best Western to its points program. The more opportunities that can be included in this program, the better it is for us as travelers. I have stayed at this hotel with my family for several years because of its services, access and comfort, also I plan to stay this year in Miami-Doral/Dolphin to take advantage of the low prices and at the same time the points that I can add to accumulate them.
Best Western… very aspirational indeed. Ugh. I think fixed-rate are a better option in almost all cases.
Glad that they are offering this option. But hope they stop the bleeding on reward redemption devaluations for a free night. 70,000 points per night is almost double what the old highest rate used to be (36,000). That’s a hefty increase.
given the travel restrictions I welcome any way to burn points
I had best western points sitting around forever since I didn’t have enough to redeem. I just haven’t been motivated to stay there since the other hotel reward programs have so much better benefits. Maybe I can finally use them for once.
Though a better value is to use points for the entire stay, it is nice to have options. Hopefully they’ll expand this to all hotels in the Best Western Brand.
It’s nice to have another option. Other hotel companies have this and it’s good that they have this too.
Haven’t stayed at a best western in ages, glad to hear there keeping up with technology!
It is not quite easy to accumulate 5000 points with this program though.
Looks like a poor value and not something that would be a very good use of your points unless you had just a few thousand points left in your account with no other way to spend them anyway…..
Great Article. Very informative. What is the best way to earn Best Western Points?
Other than stays, there’s not many ways, though there is a credit card from First Bankcard that has an ok sign up bonus.
I’m not going to say it’s the best way, but it’s another way. You can earn points for car rentals: https://www.bestwestern.com/en_US/best-western-rewards/travel-partners.html
Seguimos con las buenas noticias.que pase pronto está situación para poder disfrutar
I am glad to be traveling again, not glad about trying to regain status…!