Choice Hotels and its Privileges loyalty program tend to go below the radar, although their quarterly promotions can be good if you’re booking cheap one night stays, while buying their points can provide enough value to encourage Greg to buy them speculatively.
Choice announced today that they’ll be making a positive change to their Privileges program in 2020. They’re launching Rollover Nights, so any elite night credits you earn in excess of your current status will be rolled over to the following year.
Here’s how it works. Choice Privileges has four different status levels based on how many nights you stay with them each year:
- Member – 0-9 nights
- Gold – 10-19 nights
- Platinum – 20-39 nights
- Diamond – 40+ nights
If you earn Gold status through stays (rather than just through their credit card) and stay between 10 and 19 nights in a year, any nights in excess of 10 will be rolled over to the following year. For example, if you stay 19 nights, 9 of those will rollover, meaning you’d only need to stay 1 night the following year in order to requalify for Gold status.
Requalifying for status with only 1 night the following year is possible at both the Platinum and Diamond elite levels too. That’s a great deal if you’ll be staying in their properties a lot one year but don’t expect to have as many stays the following year as it means you get to enjoy an additional year of status when staying as little as 1 night the next year. One thing to note is that if you earn Diamond status, the maximum number of nights you can rollover the following year is 39. You therefore can’t stay 80 nights in one year and rollover 40 of them to the following year to automatically requalify as a Diamond member.
I don’t believe Choice Hotels has made any adjustments to the number of nights you have to stay in order to earn each level of status, so this is a positive change without there being any accompanying devaluation.
Another nice feature of this program enhancement is that even though it’s not coming into effect until January 1, 2020, any additional nights earned in excess of Gold status or higher during 2019 will be rolled over in 2020, giving you a head start on qualification for 2021 status.
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Pondering what you could possibly get with Diamond Elite status at Choice Hotels. I’ve been on a wacky adventure with them on Gold (credit card) status. Gold status has meant (1) nothing at all, (2) a plastic bag of Laffy Taffy and Jolly Ranchers as a welcome amenity (true!), (3) a pretty seedy property that upgraded me to an interesting room put together from two individual hotel rooms with a connecting door, and a large hot tub installed next to the bed – it took me 20 mins to fill. I recently stayed at a Cambria property, and still processing what a unique niche it fills. I bought points in the last promo, and would do so again – getting a lot of (always interesting) value from Choice.
Thanks for the heads-up.
Choice, Radisson, and the second-tier hotel programs are strangely underrated. Sweet spots galore that we almost never hear about. If you are on an interstate road trip and need a cheap night, Choice is awesome when they are running the “stay twice, get 8000” promos. Can be almost free, especially on a tax-deductible trip, and often there are few alternatives anyway.
Now of course if only Hyatt would introduce rollover (and “stay 4 on points, get 5”) it would be unstoppable.
Yep, I’d love a 5th night free benefit with Hyatt. We’ve had some good low category stays with Choice & Radisson too – the Country Inn & Suites London, KY was great value for 15k per night earlier this year.