Choice Hotels Choice Privileges Orlando MCO

Choice Privileges Orlando reward night upgrades

a screenshot of a hotel

Choice Privileges points are on sale April 10 through Daily Getaways. One aspect of Choice Privileges at some hotels is the option to book upgraded rooms on reward nights using points. The secret is finding the specific hotels where many types of rooms, including suites are available for the standard number of points.

Most Choice brand hotels do not offer upgraded rooms when using points. Most hotels only offer basic rooms with one or two beds. The key is searching hotels in the places you plan to travel to find specific hotels offering higher category rooms for reward nights using points.

As long as you have sufficient points for one reward night in your account, you can see what kinds of hotel rooms are offered at any specific hotel. You will see a “Sold Out†message if you do not have the points in your account needed to book the hotel you search.

This post shares examples from a search of hotel rewards in Orlando, Florida.

Clarion Inn & Suites, Orlando Florida = 12,000 points per night.

Clarion Inn Orlando

Clarion Inn & Suites, Orlando search for Monday May 21 pulls up 10 different room choices for 12,000 points including poolside rooms, pool view rooms, accessible rooms, one King Bed, one queen bed and four room types with two queen beds, including a suite.

Clarion Orlando suite

The lowest published rate for rooms is $83 for a prepaid room and $98 for a flexible cancellation rate in a queen room. The lowest rate for the suite is $110.22 after tax for advance purchase, nonrefundable rate.

AAA rate for Two Queens Suite is $125 after tax. The basic One Queen room is $109.81 after tax on flexible AAA rate. These paid rates have similar flexible cancellation rules to reward nights.

Clarion Inn & Suites has a suite for 12,000 points as a $15 upgrade value compared to the basic room reward. This is a small rate difference for this hotel on a weeknight.

There is more value to be squeezed out of Choice Privileges points for a 4-night Memorial weekend stay in a suite. The Two Queens suite with sofabed sleeps up to six.

Clarion Inn Suite 48K May24-28

A Two Queens, One Sofabed room at Clarion Inn & Suites Orlando is 48,000 points for 4 nights over Memorial Day holiday weekend.

This same room is $626.56 after tax on a AAA rate.

Clarion Suite AAA May24-28 $640

US residents can purchase 55,000 Choice Privileges points for $265 on Tuesday April 10 in the U.S. Travel Association annual Daily Getaways sale.

48,000 Choice Privileges points allow a member to get a 57% discount on the cost of a $627 hotel suite in Orlando, Florida over Memorial weekend.

This is just one example of hundreds of hotels where Choice Privileges points can buy an upgraded room at a significant discount to prevailing rates.

There are other Choice Hotels in Orlando offering suites as reward nights, like Comfort Inn & Suites Convention Center.

There is good value to be found with Choice Privileges points if you can match a good hotel reward deal with your travel plans.

4 Comments

  • Ben April 8, 2018

    What’s the likelihood of being able to purchase these points? Will they go like wildfire?

  • Ric Garrido April 9, 2018

    @Ben – Chances are far better in 2018 than 2016 or 2017 when these points went nearly instantaneously. There are 6,000+ sets of points compared to about 1,000 sets the past two years. And the price is 20% more than previous two years.

  • KC April 15, 2018

    @Ric – Choice Hotels are up and down with website, app, and promotions program. The only time I’ve seen “Sold out” is when the hotel is actually sold out. I have well over 200k points and there are times when I look to book a room at everyday rate and rooms are available but when I change to check the reward rate it states “not available”, so just to be sure that those rooms didn’t sell out that quick I go back to the everyday rate and they’re still available. It’s a possibility each hotel has a threshold only how many nightly rewards customers it allows. Also Choice has changed the search option to where you can only list the city and state you’re headed to and that sucks! In the past you could input your exact destination location and it would list what Choice hotels are in close proximity. Say for instance you’re destination is CNN in Atlanta, GA, so you would input CNN exact address and it would list the closest hotel first on down the list to the farthest away depending on the filter you chose. Now that has changed so that you can only list city and state it makes it much harder to book, try putting Atlanta GA in search while trying to locate how far the hotels listed are from your destination. If you ever visited Atlanta you know it’s a big city where 10 miles could turn in to a 45 minute ride given how bad traffic is. So now when booking I have to open Googlemaps to see exactly how far each hotel is from my destination, instead of the screen Choice once had that listed your exact destination as the blue dot on the map and hotels icon proximity all on one screen. Now onto the promotions, they’re hard to find on website almost like they’re hidden and you probably wouldn’t know about it if you overlooked the email sent out. I’ve had several issues signing up for promotions online to where I had to call support and let them do it for me! I’m not sure if you’ve seen it or not but they’ve been running a promotion lately where you can pay extra on your reservation and get 1k/2k extra points added. This promotion is so inconsistent because it doesn’t list it for every hotel during promotion. It’s not even consistent when it’s listed with room before you check out and you step away from computer for 30 minutes and login times out and you log back in it’s not listed as an option anymore. I get frustrated and when you call customer service they’re unaware of promotion. Please tell me why if I’m a member I have to sign up for promotion, I feel it should be automatic. If you are part of a rewards program wouldn’t you want every perk/promotion unless it cost to enter?! I’ll stop for now!

  • Ric Garrido April 16, 2018

    Sounds like you spend a lot of time using Choice websites.

    I checked Atlanta hotels for Choice Privileges reward booking for June 4 without being logged in to my account. All hotels return message “Sold Out”.

    When I log in to Choice Privileges, then I see reward rates for these same hotels. Most hotels come up 20,000 points.

    I currently have Gold elite status and I can book a USA hotel up to 50 days before stay.

    If I check Atlanta hotels for a date more than 50 days from today, from June 6 or later, I receive the message “CAN BE BOOKED WITH POINTS FOR STAYS BEFORE
    JUNE 6, 2018”

    and if I am looking at a specific hotel in Atlanta, like
    INN AT THE PEACHTREES, AN ASCEND HOTEL COLLECTION MEMBER for a June 6 points reward reservation, the message I receive:

    “Sorry, there are no rooms available on Wednesday, June 6, 2018 for 1 night.”

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