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Thread: Choice Hotels

  1. #41
    Another thing I forgot to add earlier, the worst and most delusional offenders, as far as pricing goes, are usually the independent paki ran motels. You would think, it would be the chains, with all the costs related to having the flag, but it's mostly the independent Patel joints, that try and find the suckers.

  2. #42
    Originally Posted by Ozzy View Post
    Great recap on the hotel industry once again Mission. One thing I've never really understood, with all my extensive travels throughout US and CAN, is there are numerous hotels, that I come across in different areas, that seem to do everything in there power, to be completely irrational, in regards to pricing and suffer the apparent consequences, with consistent occupancy levels, that appear to be pathetic like sub 20-30% even as low as teens. My gauge is by amount of rooms vs cars in parking lot. I understand that some people, have no vehicle and some places have more weekly/monthly( live in residents) Factoring all that into the mix( pre covid) my question is, are there any benefits for these owner/managers to be completely ludicrous, in regards to pricing themselves out of the market? I can't think of any, other then poaching for suckers. I would rather have 70-100% occupancy, at slightly below market, then 0-30% trying to find complete imbeciles. For the record, I'm speaking for areas that I frequent regularly and know very well, on both sides of the border. Were talking amounts that sometimes are up to 400% more then the market dictates, for the time of year, day of week and region in question. Your take from a managerial stand point, would be interesting. I'm totally puzzled by this.
    Thanks Ozzy!

    Another one is that one car or truck can also represent multiple worker rooms. Guys with the same company often ride together and you'll only see one truck in the parking lot for two rooms.

    I don't know what you mean by, "Completely ludicrous," but I can say that everything along those lines is going to vary from market to market and there are many possible scenarios for what you describe. I'll name just a few and keep it as brief as I possibly can, which anyone who has read me knows will not be very brief:

    1. Quiet Collusion:

    Technically, hotels in a given area couldn't openly collude to create a rate floor, but there ends up being a sort of de facto collusion given enough time---in some markets. A bunch of hotels just say, "Okay, we know there are a finite number of people who are going to be traveling through this area during this time of year, so let's not cut each other's throats on trying to snatch them all with the lowest prices...we'll just stay within a reasonable price range of each other and get what we get."

    Simply put, create an artificial price floor. If you see an area where most of the hotels look as though they are at 20-40% occupancy, (or whatever low range) then none of them are going to sell out regardless of what they do. Lowering the prices is just mutually assured destruction because the other nearby hotels will also lower theirs accordingly and everyone makes less money. Then the first hotel to lower them lowers them again in response---so on and so forth---and eventually all of the hotels sit at 20-40% (or what have you) except now they're not even making as much on the rooms that they do have.

    We had basically the same thing going on in our market before the boom, and best I can tell, it had started going on again even before COVID---though I don't work there anymore. All of the economy/limited service hotels basically exist within a rate range of $0-$25 from one another when it is super dead.

    The thing is, we don't really compete with each other for travelers within the market; we just figure they go wherever they go. In that market, we mostly competed for weekly/monthly guests and that's where we would kind of try to hide what we were doing from one another. We were all pretty transparent with each other when it came to nightly rates. We'd even take a consensus amongst each other whether or not it had gotten busy enough (in the Spring) to maybe bump it up a little bit and you'd see us all do it at basically the same time.

    So, when it comes to the nightly guests...you're mainly just price competing with other nearby markets, not so much with one another. If there are no nearby markets, then you can do basically whatever you want. It's a, "Would you rather pay the $75/night, or would you rather drive another fifty miles?", type thing.

    Also, acceptance rate. If 10/10 people would accept a rate of $40, 9/10 people would accept a rate of $45, 8/10 would accept $50 and 6/10 would accept $70...then the $70 rate is the best one by far, even though 40% of the people who walk in refuse to pay it, here's how it breaks down:

    $400-Ten Rooms
    $405-Nine Rooms
    $400-Eight Rooms
    $420-Six Rooms

    So, fewer rooms is less in direct costs (the cost associated with actually renting the room) and you just try to kind of find what you think is the sweet spot. In this simplified example, only renting six of ten possible rooms is not only the most profitable after direct costs, it also results in the best revenue straight up.

    2. Taking a Loss/Minimizing Gains

    Some franchise contracts have a variable franchise fee that is based on the previous year's revenues. Kind of like taxes, you don't want to barely make it into the next highest tier. So, these hotels might deliberately try not to do too much to maximize revenues during slow seasons and are essentially a complete 1-2 person show for part of the year. When that is the case, they're really only interested in renting an individual room if they are making a ton of revenue relative to the direct costs of renting it. Otherwise, it's really just not worth it to them.

    3. (Most Likely!!!) Weeklies

    The MOST LIKELY one is that you already have some weekly rate worker types staying in the hotel, so you CAN'T put your rates lower than what they are paying, even if you wanted to. When you extend a contract to a company, the contract will generally give them some sort of flat weekly rate that they always pay because they're going to have at least some rooms with you around the entire calendar.

    In any event, they have to feel like they are getting a bargain...which they obviously are relative to the busy demand season when you're charging $100+/night to overnight guests. But, during slower seasons, these weeklies benefit the hotel because otherwise you would be sitting there with two rooms occupied in the entire place.

    Whatever the weekly rate contract is, that basically sets an absolute rate floor for you...because if the company looks online (or calls the hotel/has someone come in) and they find out that your regular nightly rate times seven equals less per week than what the company is paying...they're going to be EXTREMELY PISSED OFF!!!. They will probably leave and the matter will not be up for negotiation, so this is something you cannot have happen.

    Therefore, if you have weeklies, (Nightly Rate * 7) must equal a greater number than whatever it is your weeklies are paying, or you risk losing the weeklies. Those are the guests you REALLY care about getting/keeping, especially if you're sitting there at 20% occupancy in the first place.

    ADDED: Also, on that note, any contract that I did had variable weekly rates based on the amount of rooms that the company had booked with us over a given period of time. Usually average number per month. More rooms = lower rate. So, what would sometimes happen with that is the company would keep a room occupied even though nobody was in it for a few days, a week, or more. The guest also liked this because he could just leave his stuff in there and it would not be disturbed until he returned.

    So, when that happens, you won't see a vehicle in the parking lot whatsoever, but there is a room occupied.

    They would even sometimes pay for a room to sit empty. They also never had to worry about us not having a room for them if they did pay for one to sit empty. The way my contracts worked out, they were better to have twenty rooms with 1-2 sitting empty than they were to have 18-19 rooms that they were paying for at what would then be the higher rate. Better to have fifteen with one empty than to have fourteen and pay the new higher rate, etc.
    Last edited by Mission146; 08-11-2020 at 05:32 AM.

  3. #43
    INDIVIDUAL WEEKLY GUESTS

    In some cases, companies do not do the bookings for their employees. Many times, companies will give employees a per diem amount that they get and room rates/food are expected to come out of that. Whatever they have left over after all of those costs is just more money in their pockets.

    When this would happen and I could determine that's the way it worked for a given guest, then the arrangement would go like this:

    "Okay, so we can do $400/week for you. That also becomes tax free if you stay thirty consecutive days, or more, so even if you're going to be gone for a day or two, you're better off just to keep the room. If you stay thirty days, then we will retroactively take the taxes off for the first thirty days and we will directly refund you that amount. I see you work for Company XYZ, I haven't seen that company before, do you have other guys working around here?"

    "Yeah, we've got some other guys. I think they're staying at other places."

    "Yeah? I'll tell you what: If you can get some of those guys staying here, and you directly refer them---which means they have to come in with you---and they take the $400/week weekly rate, I'll take $40/week off of YOUR rate for each guy that you refer and or each week that they stay."

    "So, if I get ten guys to come in, that means I get to stay here for free?"

    "Yup. It sure does. As long as ten other guys stay that full week, it would be a total of $400 off of your rate and you would stay completely for free that week."
    Last edited by Mission146; 08-11-2020 at 05:49 AM.

  4. #44
    That makes a lot more sense Mission, in regards to pricing/competition, still surprised on how a lot of the individual ran Patel motels, that have a lot less costs, sit as empty as they do. There costs are way below franchise places such as Choice. They should be significantly more competitive, in any market, due to those reduced fees. There are many times, where you can pay a lot less, staying at a Econo/Rodeway with good perks during a promotion, or stay at a Patel, with minimal kickback( TPW). Also you mentioned booking directly with hotel, for best rates, that works with level headed, rational managers such as yourself, who understand the big picture, that both parties win, and creates loyalty customer retention. With these Patel owners/managers, I get the impression they are so firm/cheap, especially older generations , that they refuse in a lot of cases, to look at the situation from a rational standpoint. As everyone who travels knows all to well, they absolutely dominate the hotel industry, I would guess upwards of 80% of all motels. This is nothing new, it's been like this the 20+ years, I've been travelling extensively throughout US-CAN.

  5. #45
    Originally Posted by Ozzy View Post
    That makes a lot more sense Mission, in regards to pricing/competition, still surprised on how a lot of the individual ran Patel motels, that have a lot less costs, sit as empty as they do. There costs are way below franchise places such as Choice. They should be significantly more competitive, in any market, due to those reduced fees. There are many times, where you can pay a lot less, staying at a Econo/Rodeway with good perks during a promotion, or stay at a Patel, with minimal kickback( TPW). Also you mentioned booking directly with hotel, for best rates, that works with level headed, rational managers such as yourself, who understand the big picture, that both parties win, and creates loyalty customer retention. With these Patel owners/managers, I get the impression they are so firm/cheap, especially older generations , that they refuse in a lot of cases, to look at the situation from a rational standpoint. As everyone who travels knows all to well, they absolutely dominate the hotel industry, I would guess upwards of 80% of all motels. This is nothing new, it's been like this the 20+ years, I've been travelling extensively throughout US-CAN.
    I think that it's over 50%, but I'm not quite sure it's as high as 80%.

    As far as the direct booking, my most common two explanations are:

    1. Lots of hotels that are corporate-owned or owned by a franchisee/company who owns a bunch of hotels basically just put things on auto-pilot. They consider switching the rates for type of guest/means of booking v. another not really worth the effort, in general, and particularly not worth it if it would cause some guests to complain that they paid a higher rate than others. For my part, I just used it as a mechanism to encourage folks to book directly the next time they were going to stay with us. In the case of these sorts of hotels, the person you're talking to on the phone often isn't going to have the authority to make that sort of decision, they just have date & rate charts that they go by.

    Higher-end hotels really don't have much incentive to do these sorts of things at all, I wouldn't think. They're not really working to get every extra dollar in bottom-line (after franchise fees and such) revenue, where I was, as long as what I was charging was high-enough, within reason. My priority order was pretty simple:

    A.) Get weeklies to create a strong base of rooms that are always, or almost always, occupied. This limits my amount of availability for walk-ins and special event/weekend bookings, but I'm also running a profitable REVPAR (revenue per available room) on dates of the calendar that other hotels are not.

    B.) Charge the regular, "Locals," out the ass to boost REVPAR. We were one of only two hotels in the entire town that would even accept cash without there being some sort of credit/debit card backing it up, and one of only four such hotels total within about thirty miles in any direction.

    -Anyway, we used this much to our advantage. We used to have a variable rate of RACK +$20 that we charged locals, until I decided that was stupid. I asked, "What's the highest that our rack rate would be on a day that we would even take locals?" The answer was $100 for any non-Jacuzzi room ($120 for locals) and $130 for jacuzzi rooms ($150 for locals). I said, "Okay, from now on, locals ALWAYS pay $120 before tax on non-jacuzzi rooms and $150 before tax on Jacuzzi rooms."

    -This actually resulted in fewer altercations in the long-run because the main thing locals would bitch about was rates being higher on some days than other days. I got rid of this by simply ALWAYS charging them the highest amount we would ever be charging them. They're coming in to do whatever it is that they do in the rooms...and they don't have plastic...so I probably could have gotten even more out of some of them. We also had the nicest rooms (BY A MILE!!!) that they were going to get without plastic. The other local hotels that would take cash with no plastic were total dumps. They were also reasonable with whatever it was they were doing, because they knew a noise complaint meant that they were out for the night with no refund. They also, I assume, did not want the cops to notice them, in many cases.

    C.) Special Event Groups

    -Charge a ridiculous price for the contract. Put all rooms, "Out of Service," in the computer for those days to kill online booking completely. Rooms can only be booked through me directly. Intentionally charge so much (relative to what they are getting) that all of the other hotels get contracts first. Therefore, none of the other hotels can book anymore contracts (already at or near a sellout) enabling me to then charge whatever ridiculous rate I want to, or they can stay 40+ miles away and drive to the event every day.

    -Even if I don't fill up on group contracts, I'll get all of the walk-ins (who I will also be charging absurd rates) because there is nowhere else to go due to everyone else being sold out.***

    ***On days like this, if I was sold out by 7:00p.m....it means I seriously fucked something up. If I sold all but one room at a REVPAR that is completely unjustifiable by the quality of the hotel, or if I sell my last room sometime after 11:00p.m., then I did a killer fucking job maximizing the money.

    D. Nightlies/Travelers

    -I made no effort to compete for these people and was generally pretty ambivalent to whether or not they stayed. If everyone else was sold out, then my rates for these people were positively obscene and in no world justifiable other than by the law of supply and demand. I could get two Nos for every Yes and I'm still filling up, so what do I care how many people walk?

    -If nobody was going to sell out, then my rates for these people were reasonable enough to be competitive, but I still really didn't care if I got them or not.*** These are the only people you ever had to worry about complaining about anything.

    ***That doesn't mean I'd let them walk out the door. If they came in; I would do almost whatever I had to (Rate/Upgrade/Perks) wise to rent to them...I just mean that I wasn't hyper-competitive on online rates.

    Rate/Upgrade/Perks:

    1. I actually had three different rates for each person in mind if I wasn't going to sell out, so I'd negotiate downward...unless they were, "Locals," who all paid the same rate.

    2. Free upgrade is obvious.

    3. Perks---If our bar was open, I'd write them some bar comps for free drinks. (This also gets them in the bar and drinking, therefore, spending more money...therefore, increasing our profits on them) I had a few gift cards to local restaurants I'd sometimes keep around. If the bar was closed, I'd offer them a free six-pack. If they seemed the type cool with minor chicanery, I'd offer another $10 off if I could rent to them, "Out of the computer." (We had a separate credit card machine for this)

    I'll address the other in the next post and do some general bitching about it.
    Last edited by Mission146; 08-22-2020 at 07:41 AM.

  6. #46
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    Another point collector is the Choice Privileges credit card. I use it almost exclusively to pay for the hotel nights. I get 5 points per dollar spent on Choice Hotels. They dump the points into my Choice Hotels account every month. The good thing about this one is I get the points on the entire price, not just pre tax dollars. I rate this as about 4% cashback.
    I just got an email from Choice Privileges (Barclays). I'm now getting 15 points per dollar spent instead of 5 on Choice Rewards hotels. Combined with the averge 21 points per dollar spent by Choice Rewards I'm getting an 8,000 point free room per every $222 spent and a 10,000 point free room per every $278 spent. This is before any promotions. There was no expiration date on the offer.
    "More importantly, mickey thought 8-4 was two games over .500. Argued about it. C'mon, man. Nothing can top that for math expertise. If GWAE ever has you on again, you can be sure I'll be calling in with that gem.'Nuff said." REDIETZ

  7. #47
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    Another point collector is the Choice Privileges credit card. I use it almost exclusively to pay for the hotel nights. I get 5 points per dollar spent on Choice Hotels. They dump the points into my Choice Hotels account every month. The good thing about this one is I get the points on the entire price, not just pre tax dollars. I rate this as about 4% cashback.
    I just got an email from Choice Privileges (Barclays). I'm now getting 15 points per dollar spent instead of 5 on Choice Rewards hotels. Combined with the averge 21 points per dollar spent by Choice Rewards I'm getting an 8,000 point free room per every $222 spent and a 10,000 point free room per every $278 spent. This is before any promotions. There was no expiration date on the offer.
    That's pretty killer! Of course, this would greatly piss me off if I were still in the business. Not at you. Good on anyone who can take full advantage of these things...might actually bring the effective rates down to what they would be if all of this bullshit wasn't in place to begin with.

  8. #48
    Ozzy,

    Okay, so getting back to the industry, I suppose:

    I don't know what it is, but the mentality of many hotel owners is that they feel like they must always be as shrewd as possible, or what they perceive as being shrewd in business. Unfortunately, they seem to view, "Shrewdness," as extracting as much money as possible from every single guest whilst spending as little as possible and consider anything else a failure. I differ in the respect that I consider, "Shrewd," hotel management to make as much as I possibly can in profits even if it means, God forbid, actually spending a little money to cater to guest needs/wants.

    Of course, I was the manager of this hotel (as opposed to owner), so I only had limited control in that regard. If I had been the owner, I'll freely admit that I considered some of our common guest areas/amenity areas downright repulsive and I never would have allowed it at any hotel that I would own. But, what am I going to do if I can't convince the owner? I'm certainly not going to spend my own personal money to make some of the changes/improvements that I saw as optimal...not that I made enough to even be able to do that had I wanted to.

    One example is that he just wanted to be able to say that the hotel had a pool, even if it meant the pool area being disgusting and way out of date. Personally, I would absolutely not swim in this pool or spend any time in the pool area. It was disgusting. It wasn't exactly unhygienic...at least in terms of the water itself...but the conditions were deplorable. Not unsafe, just gross. I could have taken the kids to swim for free anytime I wanted and did so exactly zero times. But, we can say it has a pool...we can put a much edited picture of a pool from the most flattering possible angle on the website, so there you go.

    He wanted to have the cheapest continental breakfast that we could possibly have while still adhering to the minimum requirements of the franchise. I'd have spent more. Not for the one-night guests who, as mentioned, I mostly didn't care about...but for the weekly/worker guests. I'd have had multiple, "Hot," items, even though we were only required to have one.

    Here's an example: At one time, we'd actually get donuts directly from a nearby bakery. That was awesome. We would get more on Saturday morning because they did not deliver on Sundays. If less than expected had been eaten, then we'd adjust the order accordingly and put the unused portion in the refrigerator until about midnight, then we'd take them out to warm back up. People LOVED these donuts, and honestly, they were pretty good.

    Eventually, God forbid, the bakery decided that we had to do a minimum order of three dozen donuts. We also had to have some delivered at least five days per week. Can you imagine? The bakery actually wants us to order an amount that might monetarily justify the fact that they are bringing them to us. The horror.

    Well, we kept pre-packaged pastries handy in case we ran out of donuts on a particular day, so he decided to switch to those all the time. We would then have about four different selections, but then he decided that people were eating or carrying away too much, so we knocked that down to two selections in (HIS) hope that people would eat less.

    Cereal, even when opened, takes some time to get stale. We were required to have a minimum of two different cereals, but I'd have done something like six if it had been my choice. Again, his reasoning for only having two was that such was the minimum franchise standard AND that people would be less likely to like either of them, therefore less likely to eat any at all, and we would save money.

    So, that's who I had to convince anytime the issue of spending money came up. LOL

    Improvements

    The first major improvement I talked him into making was I found a really good bulk deal on LCD HDTV's well before they were considered expected in hotels, particularly hotels at our level. In fact, we were the ONLY hotel in the entire town to even have these TV's for the better part of a year...and that's partially compared to MUCH better franchises and MUCH nicer hotels in every other possible respect.

    But, we dominated in the weekly market (pre work boom in the area) and nobody could figure out what the hell we were doing...even though it was very simple. People who like to watch TV, or let's be honest, porn...like good TV's. That's not a difficult concept. So, our rooms had the best TV's in town, many with built-in DVD players, I might add.

    The next improvement when other hotels started getting the good TV's was to get full-sized refrigerator/freezers in every room. Even when I left, we might have been the ONLY hotel in town (of those that already existed when I started) to have actual full-sized ones.

    Again, we kicked ass in the weekly market and commanded pretty good weekly rates, despite being far from the best hotel overall. But, we gave the guys who were in town for long stretches at a time the sort of amenities that they would actually care about. When I say, "Pretty good weekly rates," I mean that the hotel chains that were a full two categories better than us weren't charging that much more than we were, and we were definitely a little higher than most in our category. I never tried to be a ton higher on weeklies because I was most concerned with volume.

    Remember, an empty room pays nothing.

    But, you have to pick your spots. Like I mentioned in the previous post, if we had some special event and I knew we were going to sell out, then I got cold-blooded really quick. If the roles had been reversed and it was someone else quoting me the rate, I would have laughed right in their face...and many walk-ins did. Doesn't matter. If we're going to sell out, all I need to do is fill-up. Whether 10 out of 10 people who stop in take a room or 3 out of 10, makes no difference to me. Knowing you're going to sell the rooms no matter what you do, the only goal is to get as much for every room as you possibly can.
    Last edited by Mission146; 08-22-2020 at 10:42 AM.

  9. #49
    The hot buffet style breakfast at the Choice Hotels were a casualty of covid-19. Only the Rodeways, Econo Lodges and Suburbans didn't have the hot breakfasts, although they did have cold breakfasts. Now all we get is pre-packaged pastry, yogurt, juice and coffee.
    "More importantly, mickey thought 8-4 was two games over .500. Argued about it. C'mon, man. Nothing can top that for math expertise. If GWAE ever has you on again, you can be sure I'll be calling in with that gem.'Nuff said." REDIETZ

  10. #50
    Just slum it and sleep in your cars!

  11. #51
    Originally Posted by jbjb View Post
    Just slum it and sleep in your cars!
    I'd sooner do that than pay what I was charging walk-ins on special event days...or suck it up and drive another forty miles.

  12. #52
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    The hot buffet style breakfast at the Choice Hotels were a casualty of covid-19. Only the Rodeways, Econo Lodges and Suburbans didn't have the hot breakfasts, although they did have cold breakfasts. Now all we get is pre-packaged pastry, yogurt, juice and coffee.
    Still sounds better than our breakfast was...at least there's yogurt. Yogurt was not a requirement for our franchise, at least, not at the time. Maybe it would be now. I also do not confirm or deny we were under the Choice umbrella.

    Also, the pastries are individually packaged. We didn't have that. We just had a bunch of El Cheapo Sam's Club bullshit that we took out and threw in a holder with a little door on it.

    Even our (one) juice sucked. Just the cheapest option from a jug poured into a pitcher that has an insertable ice container, not even individual juice containers. He'd have used Sunny D if he thought he could get away with it. I think I also explained to him that Sunny D is not much cheaper than generic juice. He even inquired if I thought we could get away doing 3/4 juice, 1/4 water.

    He finally got a juice machine with the boxes of juice that get inserted after I managed to convince him those are actually cheaper, long-run. We had two different kinds of juice then. LMAO

  13. #53
    Originally Posted by jbjb View Post
    Just slum it and sleep in your cars!
    Choice hotels is pretty much the equivalent of sleeping in your car

  14. #54
    Originally Posted by Advantageplay View Post
    Originally Posted by jbjb View Post
    Just slum it and sleep in your cars!
    Choice hotels is pretty much the equivalent of sleeping in your car
    As opposed to what? You are taking cheap shots here, Disadvantageplay.

    I don't have a shower in my car.
    I don't have cable television in my car.
    I don't have a toilet in my car.
    I don't have a king size bed in my car.
    I don't have a computer work station in my car.
    I don't have a coffeemaker in my car.
    I don't have breakfast waiting in my car.

    But you are welcome to show us your 20K a month hotel bill where you are living in the lap of luxury while you AP.

    You've got a real cute username for a troll.
    Last edited by mickeycrimm; 08-22-2020 at 06:51 PM.
    "More importantly, mickey thought 8-4 was two games over .500. Argued about it. C'mon, man. Nothing can top that for math expertise. If GWAE ever has you on again, you can be sure I'll be calling in with that gem.'Nuff said." REDIETZ

  15. #55
    On a more neighborly note mickey---there are a ton of fully loaded camper vans available that would be perfect for one guy travelling. Have you ever looked into that? Whenever we've travelled in our class A or truck/camper, we still stayed at a hotel or motel every 6th and/or 7th day just to recharge ourselves away from the small spaces of the RV's. It's a bit more difficult when you have a dog, but it's just a thought since you don't have one.

  16. #56
    Originally Posted by Rob.Singer View Post
    On a more neighborly note mickey---there are a ton of fully loaded camper vans available that would be perfect for one guy travelling. Have you ever looked into that? Whenever we've travelled in our class A or truck/camper, we still stayed at a hotel or motel every 6th and/or 7th day just to recharge ourselves away from the small spaces of the RV's. It's a bit more difficult when you have a dog, but it's just a thought since you don't have one.
    Hey, Rob. Yes, I've been looking into #vanlife. I have a yahoo folder dedicated to vans, the conversions that make them liveable, the companies that do van conversions, and lots of videos of people showing the insides of their camper vans. I've been thinking about making a full time switch to camper van living. There are a lot of logistics to work out. I'm trying to think through as much of it as I can.

    I'll start a thread on the topic.
    "More importantly, mickey thought 8-4 was two games over .500. Argued about it. C'mon, man. Nothing can top that for math expertise. If GWAE ever has you on again, you can be sure I'll be calling in with that gem.'Nuff said." REDIETZ

  17. #57
    Originally Posted by mickeycrimm View Post
    Originally Posted by Advantageplay View Post
    Originally Posted by jbjb View Post
    Just slum it and sleep in your cars!
    Choice hotels is pretty much the equivalent of sleeping in your car
    As opposed to what? You are taking cheap shots here, Disadvantageplay.

    I don't have a shower in my car.
    I don't have cable television in my car.
    I don't have a toilet in my car.
    I don't have a king size bed in my car.
    I don't have a computer work station in my car.
    I don't have a coffeemaker in my car.
    I don't have breakfast waiting in my car.

    But you are welcome to show us your 20K a month hotel bill where you are living in the lap of luxury while you AP.

    You've got a real cute username for a troll.
    I’ve stayed in probably every hotel chain over the years and have had good and bad visits in all of them. I use Trip Advisor before booking to get an idea of what I should expect. One of the worst hotels I ever stayed at was a Hyatt House in Tampa not that long ago. Just because it has the Hyatt name on it doesn’t make it great. And I’ve stayed in some very nice Days Inn’s and Super 8’s over the years.

    Once thing I noticed with the lower end hotels is they seem to be better in rural areas compared to cities. Especially near airports, the cheaper a hotel is, the lessor clientele it brings in. Including weekend groups partying that can ruin the night. If I have to stay near an airport for an early morning flight, I shell out for the higher end hotel.

    When traveling in the country I’ll stay at the basic place and never have an issue.

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    Replies: 41
    Last Post: 06-08-2020, 06:44 PM
  2. Replies: 2
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  3. AP'ing Credit Cards & Hotels
    By mickeycrimm in forum Las Vegas
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  5. My Choice
    By whodat in forum Total Rewards and MLife
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