Choice Privileges is similar to IHG with a large group of hotels at the budget-friendly end. But is the valuation of Choice Privileges points the same?

Everything has a value

I don’t need to reiterate what I’ve already stated previously, but it’s still worth mentioning. Travel using points isn’t free. Since it’s not free, there must be a value attached to it. You could then calculate the value of a point.

It’s important to also distinguish the value of a point from the cost of a point. The value is what the point can buy while the cost is what you spent to acquire the point. The difference, then, between the value and the cost can be thought of as the spread. Common sense would dictate that you don’t want the cost to exceed the value of the point (i.e., a negative spread) or you would have lost money in the transaction.

For the purposes of the below, I’m just going to define the value of the point and not the cost. Everyone’s cost will vary depending what avenues of acquiring points are available to them. I’ll save that cost calculation for you to do.

Key considerations for Choice Privileges points

It’s important to identify a few key considerations to this valuation so we can look at this in the proper framework.

Each point in the same program is not worth the same amount

This one is an odd one. If you open a loyalty account and only earn one point, what is that point worth? Well, assuming you can’t redeem just one point, that point has zero value to you. In fact, each point you earn before you can redeem any of them is worth zero. The point that enables you to then redeem for an award is the one that’s worth a significant amount.

If you were to theoretically plot this out on a graph, you’d see a chart that jumps all over the place. It’s not very useful to think of points as a function plotted on a graph. Instead, it’s better to think of points as an average value. I’d rather not think about calculus when spending time in this hobby.

How much do you cherry pick your awards?

Now that you’re thinking of points themselves bouncing around in value, you can also start thinking about cherry picking for the better awards. Do you spend 1,000 miles buying $10 off travel or do you wait for 2,000 miles when you can get $25 off? That’s a simplistic example but it does help demonstrate what this dynamic entails.

Your comfort level in cherry picking the best value will depend on your earn rate, your comfort level in the program not devaluing, and the spread you’re looking to get.

The cash price the award replaced isn’t always the proper valuation

Let’s say you find an award for two one-way international flights that together form a roundtrip journey. If you didn’t have access to points, you likely wouldn’t book these flights as one-ways. Generally international roundtrip flights are significantly cheaper than one-ways. Claiming your points have the value of the cash price of two one-ways would then be inflating the value of the points.

The proper valuation should consider opportunity cost. If you didn’t have points at your disposal, what would you have paid in cash? Sometimes the cash rate might be the proper metric (it could be the only hotel in town that works for your needs), but it might not be.

Everyone’s valuation will be different

It’s important to know that my valuation will be different from yours. That’s because the awards that I might be interested in aren’t the same awards you would be interested in. Valuing points is inherently a very personal calculation that considers what I would redeem for and when.

Within this concept is the truth that sometimes elite status affects the value of points. Take Hyatt’s program where Globalist status can offer free parking on award stays but no free parking on cash stays. That then means that Globalists might have a higher valuation of Hyatt points than non-Globalists. Another example might be Hilton’s fifth night free when booked with points but only for elite members.

What do you get out of my valuation? It’s more of the framework that matters, so that you can consider your own valuation.

The method of valuing Choice Privileges points

We’ve talked about how we built up the value for each of the following:

• Accor points (worth 2.4 cents each)
• Hilton points (worth 0.4 cents each)
• Hyatt points (worth 2.0 cents each)
• IHG points (worth 0.64 cents each)
• LHW Leaders Club points (worth 8.0 cents each)
• Marriott Bonvoy points (worth 0.9 cents each)
• Wyndham Rewards points (worth 1.0 cents each)

Choice Privileges is often labeled a program that focuses on the leaner end and lacks aspirational appeal. And that’s true: budget-friendly hotels are its bread and butter. The hotel chain does tier its hotels, with Cambria, Ascend, and Radisson Blu (just the ones in the Americas) as its higher-scale options. There’s also the collection of Preferred Hotels bookable with points.

Given the similarities with IHG, we’ll follow the same approach of looking at each hotel brand to see if a pattern emerges. For this exercise, I’m also going to ignore using your Choice Privileges points through anything other than the Choice website. Yes, Strawberry Hotels (previously known as Nordic Choice) has its own website with different award availability and award prices, and adds another layer of complexity. But it seems like Choice’s website offers the best pricing most of the time, so let’s stick to that.

How I earn my Choice Privileges points

I have been sitting on a large stash of Choice Privileges points acquired at a cheap rate back during the now-defunct Daily Getaways sales. You might also find sales on their points from Choice directly, but ideally you’ll want to keep specific redemptions in mind before you buy.

The methodology

Let’s apply a similar approach as I did for IHG hotels to see if anything becomes transparent:

• I picked three hotels in each brand at random, spread across the world.
• I looked at the one-night cost of each hotel on the first of each month from May 2025 to January 2026.
• If the hotel did not have any points availability on any given night, it was omitted from the calculation.
• The cost of taxes and fees is included in the cash price but the resort/destination fee is not. That’s because Choice assesses the fee on award nights, thus points won’t cover that price.
• The cash price reflects the member-only refundable rate. While that makes the cash price more expensive than the non-refundable rate, points stays are typically refundable.
• When points can book multiple room types, the room type with the cheapest cash rate is used.

Results and observations

Here’s where I think Choice Privileges is an interesting program. For the most part, the points price for the hotel minimally changes throughout the year aside from potential spikes in cash prices. That can potentially lead to pockets of outsized value.

There are a lot of hotel brands, but most of them only exist within the Americas. And confusingly, there are Radisson-branded hotels in Europe and elsewhere but those are separately managed and not bookable with Choice Privileges points.

I’m not sure if it’s just bias with the small sample size, but it seemed like hotels in Japan provides more value. Then again, there has been a relative boom in tourism in recent years, and perhaps points prices have not caught up yet.

One other consideration is that many Choice hotels seem to allow you to book a wide variety of rooms for the same points price. Sometimes this leads to you booking suites at the same price as a standard room or a room that can fit a party of six for nothing extra. Choice is actually the best hotel program in this regard, giving redemptions that just aren’t possible elsewhere for the base point price. Unlike IHG, I feel it’s necessary to include this.

Caveats

The obvious shortcoming of the study is sample size. I’d love to add more credibility by including more properties, but I don’t have the time or bandwidth to take that deep of a dive. This study will be improved when I have the ability to expand its scope but I don’t feel it inhibits the general conclusions of this study.

And the survey says…!

For this one, given the existence of much better rooms for the same points price at many hotels, I can’t take a straight average of the results. So let’s take a look at some general statistics from this study.

The mean is sitting right at 0.9 cents per point, which corresponds roughly to the 75th percentile of results. It already suggests you’re looking at some decent cherry-picking, but moving up to the 85th percentile shows a huge jump. I feel inclined to split the difference and settle on the results of the 80th percentile. That would mean my value of Choice Privileges points is 1.1 cents each.

The upper range of results suggest there is still plenty of value available, but I want to illustrate what I would be perfectly comfortable using my points towards. And getting 1.1 cents of value for each point is entirely reasonable. Choice isn’t my program of choice (pun not intended), and it is rather low due to the lack of a compelling elite program and an absence of aspirational properties. So I’m fine being a little more strict with my use of points.

The thought process is the same as elsewhere

Unless you have an endless supply of points at your disposal, it would behoove you to cherry-pick your rewards. Don’t just use your points for every redemption out there because not every redemption is made equal. Of course, the far opposite isn’t good either: if you are afraid of using your points at any hotel that isn’t the absolute best redemption, you’ll never use them. Pick a price that works for you and have no regrets when you redeem above that threshold.

At the very least, with Choice Privileges, you might be able to find better rooms without needing to spend extra points. And that’s pretty neat.

How much do you value Choice Privileges points?