Over on Wov, Mission told what he knows about hotels from the management perspective. I think he was running a Choice Hotel, most likely an Econo Lodge. So I thought I would tell what I know from a Choice Hotels longtime regular customer's perspective.

There are about 6200 hotels nationwide under the Choice Hotels umbrella. They include:

Cambria
Ascend
Main Stay Suites
Comfort Inns and Suites
Suburban Lodge
Quality Inn
Econo Lodge
Rodeway.

As far as quality goes the Econos and Rodeways are at the bottom of the heap but they also have the cheapest prices. Quality Inns and Suburban Lodges are a little better. The Comforts, Main Stays, Ascend and Cambria are very good quality but you also pay a premium price.

Econos and Rodeways serve a cold breakfast. The rest serve a hot breakfast except for Suburban which doesn't serve breakfast at all. And....during covid they have all seen fit to quit serving a hot breakfast so all we are getting is cold now.

The rewards program is called Choice Privileges. You start out getting 10 points per pre tax dollar you spend on rooms. It takes at least 8000 points to get a free room night. So if you buy a room at $75 but pay $85 after tax is added you will average only about 9 points per dollar spent.

So on average you will spend about $889 to get 8000 points. What will you get for 8000 points? Not much. You will generally get either a Rodeway or Econo room for 1 night that normally sells for $55 or less. A Quality Inn will generally run 10,000 points. The hotels higher up the quality ladder can go even higher, 12,000 to 20,000 points, maybe even higher.

The good news is when you ascend up the membership ladder you get more points per dollar spent. It takes 25 nights to become a diamond member, the highest level. They advertise that you get 25 points per pre-tax dollar spent but I don't average that much, maybe 23 points, then after tax it's even lower, about 21 points. So I average 8000 points per every $380 spent, 10,000 points per every $476 spent.