Frequent Miler on the Air - Choice Privileges Pros and Cons | Coffee Break Ep95 | 3-3-26

Episode Date: March 3, 2026

Choice Privileges is a hotel chain with brands like Clarion, Comfort Inn, Quality Inn, Radisson Americas etc. In today's podcast, we'll talk about the pros and cons of this program. You can find our Choice Privileges complete guide here.Choice Privileges Pros and ConsPros / items of interest...(01:37) - Earn elite status through credit card spend thanks to an update in early 2026. (05:59) - (Somewhat) fixed award chart(07:16) - Ability to book premium rooms with points sometimes(09:53) - Preferred Hotels partnershipLearn more about this partnership here(11:53) - Transfer 1:2 from Citi or Wells Fargo(12:31) - Buy points for around .7cpp during sales(13:14) - Titanium Travel Award: 50% off award stay up to 7 nightsCons...(16:23) - Not much elite benefit. Breakfast at Diamond, Titanium Travel Award at Titanium. (17:10) - Points expire after 18 months of inactivity(17:37) - Fewer aspirational properties (apart from Preferred Hotels, and even that experience is complicated)Visit https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe to get updated on in-depth points and miles content like this, and don’t forget to like and follow us on social media.Music Credit – Beach Walk by Unicorn HeadsMentioned in this episode:Visit FrequentMiler.com Did you know that Frequent Miller is also a website? At frequentMiller.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best, Best Credit Cards page on the web, guides to all popular rewards programs, and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our posts sent to your email, go to frequentMiller.com/subscribe and sign up for free. https://frequentmiler.com/subscribe/

This is a Voyescape podcast. You can find all of our travel podcasts from around the world at voyescape.com. Welcome to Freakimilers Coffee Break, where we focus on a single topic related to miles and points. And each coffee break is limited to 20 minutes or less or your money back. Today's coffee break, choice privileges, pros and cons. Nick has been diving into the Choice Privileges Program quite a bit lately, So we figured it would be a good time to take a look at the program, the biggest program we probably talk about the least. That's true. When you say the biggest, I think they have something like 7,500 properties around the world now in choice privileges.

Plus, you can use choice privileges points to book preferred hotels and other separate entity entirely. So they really are one of the bigger chains. But like you said, we don't talk about them as much. So today we'll talk about some pros and some cons. We'll start out with the pros. the reasons why you maybe should be paying attention to this program, even though perhaps you haven't. Now, I guess we should really start at a base level and say choice privileges is a chain like Marriott or Hilton with a whole bunch of brands.

Some of the brands you're probably familiar with are things like Clarion, Comfort in, quality in, sleep in. Those are a few examples of. There's a lot of ins. Can you come up with? A bunch of ins. Yes. And sometimes they're ins and sweets, in fact. But those are some of the brands you may know a little bit better.

They also have, though, Ascend collection and some other unique sort of Radisson individuals. Radisson Americas is part of choice. So you'll see Radisson Blue and Radisson and Parkin as they exist in the Americas. So let's talk about some of the pros with this program. First of all, you can earn elite status through credit card spend, thanks to a 2026 update. And it doesn't require a ton of credit card spend to get, meaningful-ish elite status. So choice has several different levels, gold, platinum, diamond, and titanium. For most listeners, I think it'll just be diamond or titanium that are particularly

of interest because diamond is where free breakfast begins. And so that would ordinarily require either 35 nights or 70,000 credits, elite credits. The kind of neat thing here is that you earn tier points with credit card spend, including in the credit card bonus categories. has a couple of credit cards, and one of them offers 5x on gas or grocery. And so that's both five redeemable points and five points towards elite status. So your diamond free breakfast status would require 70,000 points. If you were doing that in spend on the credit card in the 5x categories, grocery and gas, it would be $14,000 in spend to get you both 70,000 redeemable points and choice diamond status. Now, free breakfast is not wildly valuable with

choice because a lot of brands, like a lot of comfort in and that type of tier of their brands automatically include free breakfast for everyone. But it could certainly come in handy at like Cambria or Ascend collection, et cetera, where you'll get free breakfast for two. So that's a diamond tier. Titanium tier requires 110,000 credits. So that would be $22,000 in spend at 5x. So quite a bit of spend. The benefit that gets added for titanium status is what they call the titanium travel award. We'll come back to that in a little bit. Dubious as to whether or not that's worth an additional $8,000 in spend, but that'll be up to you to determine whether or not that's useful for you. I think that the most interesting piece here could also be that maybe that'll create an opportunity

for you to status match to another program if you're able to meet spending requirements easily. but keep in mind that the credit card does not necessarily offer the best return you can get in those bonus categories, not even in terms of choice points. So you can earn, like I said, five points per dollar gas and grocery with one of the choice privileges credit cards. However, consider that you could alternatively use the city premier card, the strata premier card, and earn three city thank you points per dollar spent in those same categories. And they transfer one to two to choice. So it's really like six choice points per dollar if you want to look at it in terms of choice points.

So you're kind of sacrificing one choice point per dollar spent on the credit card in order to earn elite status, which might be a choice you're willing to make if you like choice points, but you should at least be aware that that's the case. Do you have a sense as to how widespread available the breakfast benefit is? So, you know, if you're going to be at an Ascend collection hotel in Europe or something, do you think it's a lock? or something, or they can have a list of exclusions like Marriott does. My sense is that it's a lock, but this is so relatively new with choice privileges, and top tier status was not particularly easy to get, nor particularly desirable because of the lack of many concrete benefits.

So they reduced the number of nights you need in order to earn status in 2026. So before 2026, you needed 40 nights in order to get diamond status. status and I believe the breakfast benefits are relatively recent addition even at that level. So no, we don't have a really clear sense of that. Now I have titanium status. I've mentioned in a post I wrote recently that I attended a choice privileges press event and I was given choice titanium status, which is something we wouldn't have organically earned on our own. So we figured this might give us an opportunity to be able to at least be familiar with the benefits. So hopefully I'll get a chance to test it at some point and see what the breakfast benefit is delivered like at a couple of properties, but we don't have a

great sense of that yet. Hopefully, readers and listeners can chime in with what their experiences have been. If you have Choice Diamond or Choice Titanium status, I'd love to hear what your experience has been with the breakfast benefit. It is for two people, for the member and one additional guest. So that is the limitation there. So another sort of pro, and of course, this is all mixed story, but another sort of pro with choice is that they have a somewhat fixed award chart Pricing runs from 6,000 points per night to 50,000 points per night for choice privileges properties, although it's not really as wide as that sounds because the vast majority of hotels are actually between 12,000 and 30,000 points per night. There are a few that are less expensive

and a few that are more expensive, but the vast majority are between the 12 and 30K per night. But it does vary a little bit. They have kind of, Stephen identified like a standard peak, off-peak sort of pricing scheme. They don't list an award chart, but if you were to search an individual property for awards throughout the year, that's essentially what you're going to find. That at peak times, there's a set price. At off-peak times, there's a set price, et cetera. So it's pretty predictable anyway in terms of how many points you need. And you may have been familiar with the choice of old, where you could only book award rooms up to 100 days in advance, but they changed that last year. So now you can book 50 weeks in advance, which is not quite as good

to some other programs, but it allows you to plan far enough in advance. You can get a good sense of what award pricing is throughout the year. Yeah, that was a long desired enhancement, so we are very glad to see that change. Yeah. And, you know, it's nice because choice allows you to book different room types. And this varies by property, but at some properties, you can book lots of different premium room types with points and sometimes for the same number of points as a standard room. So you might be able to book a room with a view or a suite or something that matters to you, a room that accommodates more people with points for this, potentially the same price as a standard room. I ran into this in Rome. We stayed at the Comfort Hotel Bolivar last year,

and I was able to book a room that accommodated more people that was significantly more expensive than the standard room for the same number of points as a standard room. So we run into that all the time. We've seen lots of situations like that over time. and in different places, also the comfort, or rather the Cambria in Traverse City last year. I booked a suite. Now, that was an instance where they have several different room types available at points. They do have slightly different pricing, but it's a really small difference. And so you can book a room that accommodates six people at that property, a two-bedroom suite

for just a couple thousand more points than the cost of a standard room. That's a big benefit the choice has going for it. Not everywhere, but at a lot of places. It does. And I want to point out to that as a result, sometimes you'll do a search of like, you know, I want to look at point hotels in this city and you'll see that the choice privileges options don't look like good values compared to the cash rates if you're looking at the two. But sometimes you might drill down and say, oh, wait a minute, as Nick was explaining, like sometimes you could get a suite for the same number of points and maybe it would have been twice as expensive. and suddenly it is a good value with points. So it's more work to drill down into each property that you might consider to find out if that's available.

But it can be well worth it because sometimes you kind of hit the jackpot. And I even saw one hotel had what they called their presidential suite available for the same number of points. So it's definitely worth exploring that. Well, and particularly in Europe where many hotels limit you to two people. in most of the standard rooms. And so if you're traveling with a family, it can be difficult to accommodate everybody in a single room. But it's worth clicking through and looking at the details

because sometimes you can book that suite that accommodates four people or six people and suddenly be able to book just a single room. And that will almost surely cost you less than what it probably would have cost you elsewhere or be a good value compared to what you would have spent elsewhere booking a couple of rooms. All right. Then continuing on there, we've got a couple of other pros. So they have a partnership with preferred hotels. Now, you can speak more to the preferred hotels partnership

because you've got a bit of experience there. Yeah, yeah. So preferred hotels is a collection of independent hotels around the world that are from sort of mid to high-end hotels. And through choice, with choice points, there are around 300 preferred hotels that will where you can use your choice points to book them. And I'm saying it that way because like there's something like 700 or somewhere in that range

preferred hotels in the world overall. You can't book all of them with choice points, but there's a good number that you can. And the whole experience can be kind of flaky and error prone. But I've had, I've been able to push through and I've booked several times with choice points, preferred hotels, and have had, you know, good experiences in the end once we get through the booking issues with that whole thing. But it can at times result in incredible value. And other times it's, you know, just fair value. It just really depends on the situation, the property, and the pricing. So, you know, pricing, they have like fixed pricing levels,

but, and I don't know if the top of my head what the top level is today for the most expensive property, that changes over time. But sometimes you'll see a hotel that's really expensive for cash. And it's price kind of mid-range when you look up how much it costs to book with choice points. Yeah. So that's a partnership worth keeping an eye on because it expands choices reach in some places where you may not otherwise find many chain properties or you just may be able to find a cool boutique property that you would enjoy using your choice privileges points to say it.

All right. The next big pro, and this is a huge part of the reason why they're interesting for a lot of readers and listeners, is that you can transfer your points one to two from city thank you rewards or from Wells Fargo rewards if you've got an autograph or an autograph journey. And that can be huge. It sure can. I mean, so, you know, if you see a really desirable hotel that's bookable for about 30,000 choice points, you're talking about only 15,000 city or Wells Fargo points. And so it really makes a

huge difference in how attractive some of those deals are. Yep. On the flip side, you can sometimes buy Choice Prolages points very cheaply, and then you might not consider transferring if you want to hold your points for a more valuable use, because Choice usually sells points for around seven-tenths of a cent per point when they're on sale. Now, there's not always a sale, but they do come around relatively frequently. And so we do see a price in that range quite a bit. And it can oftentimes make sense to buy points if you have a decent redemption in mind because there are so many opportunities where you could do really well with choice points. Now to be clear, there are plenty of situations where you do very poorly using your choice points for a property that's not a great

value. But if you're kind of cherry picking those good value locations, there are times when it can certainly make sense to buy points. All right. And then finally, we've got the titanium travel award. Now, this is the key benefit of reaching titanium status. In fact, it's the only additional benefit, as of now, for reaching titanium status. And what it is is you get an award or a certificate sort of that's good for 50% off of an award stay of up to seven nights. And so you'll pay half the number of points for an award stay up to seven nights at select properties. I'll come back to that in a second. The big pro here is that you could potentially save a lot at the top end if you're looking at a property.

that costs 50,000 choice privileges points per night times seven nights, your savings could be 175,000 choice privileges points. That's pretty significant. So that could be a great deal. Of course, there aren't very many properties that charge 50,000 points per night. And as I said, you're stuck to a limited footprint. They say more than 400 properties, and that seems to be relatively accurate. But first of all, you can't see the list of properties until you have titanium status. And then when you And you'll see that there are some properties in there that don't charge very many points. There were some places that were only 8,000 points per night. And so you'll save half, but half means you'll save 4,000 points per night.

And if you're only going to stay four or five nights, it's just not a huge savings on a shorter stay at a more reasonably priced award. And you can't book any preferred hotels this way. Is that correct? Correct. It does not apply to preferred hotels. So it's mostly Cambria, Ascend collection, and a couple of other Radisson individuals is in there. Radisson Blue is in there. And it's not every single one.

It's just a selection of them. So it sort of limits you in that way. Now, on the flip side, when I started taking into this, I was really surprised at some of the places where I just wouldn't have even thought to look at choice privileges. I noted in the post that about 250 cities in the U.S. or in North America, I think it was. About 250 cities are on the list in the United States now that some of those cities have more than one option for redeeming your points with a titanium travel award. And then there's about 100 cities listed abroad outside the United States. And out of that about 100 cities,

33 of them are in Spain. And so, you know, I challenge most readers to try to name 33 cities that are in Spain. Probably most of us wouldn't be familiar enough with Spain to certainly to name more than the 33. So there's a wide range of places. If you're planning a trip to Spain, there's a whole bunch of Ascent Collection properties that I didn't even realize were there. Some of them look really cool, but some of them are a good value already with points. So the value of that titanium travel award again, it's going to be kind of variable and hard to predict. I don't necessarily know that it's worth going after titanium status for it, but it's kind of a cool outside of the box idea for choice anyway to come up with something different. Yeah.

Yeah, it is really creative. All right. Let's pause here for a quick. quick break. We'll be right back. We hope you're enjoying the Frequent Miler on the air podcast. Did you know that Frequent Miler is also a website? At Frequentmiler.com, you'll find all the latest deals, news about points, miles, and rewarding credit cards, the single best best credit cards page on the web guides to all popular rewards programs and many other terrific resources. If you'd like to get our post sent to your email, go to Frequentmiler.com forward slash subscribe and sign up for you. for free. And we're back. Now let's talk about the cons. What don't we like about the choice

privileges program? Well, I mean, I've kind of already mentioned some of these. There's not really much elite benefit. You get breakfast at Diamond and the titanium travel ward a titanium. That's really basically it. I mean, there's maybe some stuff like guaranteed availability within a certain amount of time. The type of benefits that you don't really think about very much, maybe better customer service, but kind of soft benefits that are hard to define. So, That's not amazing. And again, a lot of choice brands already offer complimentary breakfast to everybody. So that benefit really is limited to the higher end brands.

Now, if you're staying at a Radisson Blue somewhere, like the Radisson Blue Aruba, for instance, I assume breakfast is probably pretty expensive there. So getting free breakfast would probably work out pretty well. But it's going to vary. You're going to need to be looking at one of those places for it to be a big benefit. Points expire after 18 months of inactivity, which I don't know if that's exactly rare. these days. I don't think about it very often with the major chains because I'm earning and redeeming enough. But I have a sense of points not expiring with the major brands or at least

a longer window before they would. So that might be a drawback. You could always just transfer some points over to keep your account activity and keep your account and points alive. But probably the biggest sticking point for a lot of listeners is going to be that there are fewer aspirational properties in general. So there's a lot of mid-range and more value. economy brands. I think I can't remember the exact number, but when I was at a press event recently, somebody from Choice mentioned the number of their hotels that are within a mile of the interstate, and it was a very significant portion of the portfolio. So a lot of their portfolio is good for that, for road trips, but not necessarily places where you're, you know, planning a trip around an award

redemption. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That, for me, is probably the number one thing that the number one con to the choice privileges program. It's just that there's not that many times when I'm planning a trip and a choice property is the place I want to want to go. Yeah, so that's definitely the big drawback there. They are working, though, I think, to change things a bit and make their program more interesting in the sense that they've also added some other things like milestone rewards that we didn't even talk about, but it's because they're such a small carrot. You get a few thousand points every, you know, 15, 25 nights in between elite statuses. And it's a very small carrot that works out to be just a little bit on each additional stay. So they're not things that are necessarily

compelling, but at least they're trying to think outside of the box with some of that. And with redeeming points for experiences, so you can redeem choice points, for instance, for some NASCAR experiences, they found that their members were more likely to be NASCAR fans than, you know, other brands or other sports, I suppose. So, so there are some things like that that may appeal to you about choice privileges. Overall, I think it's less exciting for us, but it's a great program to have in your back pocket for those times when the value is really there

because sometimes it is. Don't forget, if you've enjoyed this and you'd like to get on our email list, you want to go to frequent miler.com slash subscribe to join our email list, follow us on all the various social media and check out our frequent mile around the air episodes dropping every Friday. Travel Tales with me, Mike Siegel, is full of funny, inspiring, and wild adventures. Listen now at voyescape.com.

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