Best Western Hotels are a brand of hotels we here in the Rewards Canada family don’t visit very often. Typically we only stay at one here in Alberta but also ventured to one in San Francisco many years ago and it was that latter expensive stay that helped us build up a decent amount of points in our Best Western Rewards account. The problem with that was that we were sitting a nice amount of points and not many places to really use them since we don’t stay with them often. There was always the option of converting to Aeroplan points or some other airline but seeing that Best Western points don’t expire it was best to leave them be until the time was required to redeem for a stay or convert to an airline. So I did just that, redeemed some points for a couple of free nights several years ago (read about that here) in Stony Plain Alberta as that seems to be the only BW we stay at. Even after that redemption I still had over 26,000 points in my account so when plans had us going up to Stony this August it was ripe for us to use some more points and bring that balance down. However best I tried that just didn’t happen! Read on to find out why!
When we book hotel stays for our family now it is almost always with multiple rooms – our kids are older now and four adults (or near adults) in a single room just doesn’t cut it anymore. So we get one room for the kids and one room for us parents. Thus we needed multiple rooms for multiple nights for this stay at the Best Western Sunrise Inn and Suites Stony Plain. I checked to see how many points were required for a free night and it was 16,000 points. Perfect, with just over 26,000 sitting in my account at least we could get one of the nights for one of the rooms for free.
I redeemed 16,000 points for that one free night and yes that one night would have only cost $107
or so in cash so not the most ideal redemption if you look at it from a mathematical standpoints. We were getting a point value of 0.66 cents – exactly the
same the last time I redeemed at this hotel. This rate is lower than my 0.8 cents valuation for BW Rewards points but as stated in our Podcast Episode 56 and our article The True Value in Reward Redemptions sometimes it doesn’t come down the mathematical value of a redemption rather it comes down to if the redemption makes sense for you and you are happy with it in the end. And I am happy to use up these points that are just sitting there and keep the $107 in my pocket. The problem however was the rest of the stay that we actually paid for. It’s not a bad problem, in fact I would say it was a good problem despite all my efforts to bring my Best Western points balance down.
As we had to pay for the remainder of the nights I knew I would earn some Best Western Rewards points – I mean there was no way to avoid it unless I didn’t provide my membership number for the booking but I had to to receive the cheaper Best Western Rewards rate which was pricing even lower than the AAA/CAA rate. So I knew we would recoup some of the 16,000 points we redeemed for the one free night and figured well my balance will still have shrunk but would be higher than the 10,000 or so points had we just redeemed for one free night.
Well that didn’t really happen and here’s why. When you stay at a Best Western Hotel you earn your base points for each dollar you spend but then you’ll earn extra if you have elite status (I have Diamond Status thanks to BW’s Status Match No Catch program), plus more points if you set up your Best Western Rewards account as a CAA Best Western Rewards account (which I did many moons ago) and then any extra points that may come from bonus offers. It’s that last one – the bonus points that really did me in in my effort to lower my balance. As you know a big part of RC and the really the only part of our global site FrequentFlyerBonuses.com is covering bonus offers for programs and as such I tend to register for most of them. We come across a lot of Best Western offers and cover them on our site – you can find them all listed on our Best Western Rewards Bonus Points page. many are targeted but do allow members to register for them so I do (and I hope you register for them as well) and always expect the miles & points acronym YMMV (Your mileage may vary). That is, if the bonus points post great, if not then no worries as I wasn’t targeted for that offer. Some of the offers I do remember now that I was targeted for like 5,000 points per night but totally forgot about them since I had registered so long ago. This is also another thing I stress so much on our site – register for an offer right away otherwise you may forget about it (which I did but luckily I did register) and lose out on more points earning. Anyways, I’m kind of rambling on here so let’s get the point and why I didn’t end up lowering my Best Western Rewards balance.
A couple of days after we checked out of the hotel the following posted to my Best Western Rewards account:
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| Base earn rates + the 500 points bonus for elite members |
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| The 30% Diamond status boost |
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| The bonus points for being a CAA Best Western Rewards member + a 15K bonus that I don’t recall at all but must have registered for |
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| And finally even more bonus offers – those email campaign ones are some of the targeted offers I mentioned before in this article |
You can imagine my surprise when I logged into my Best Western Rewards account and saw all this activity! This multiple night multiple room stay earned 31,200 points! Almost double the amount I had redeemed for that one free night. My plan to lower my Best Western Rewards account went up in smoke thanks to those bonus offers and now there are over 41,000 points sitting in the account!
The extras don’t end there either – first this stay was made during Best Western’s summer systemwide promotion providing a $20 gift card for each night completed. If am correct in my calculations I should receive the maximum 5 cards for this stay totaling $100. Second, this stay was paid for on The Platinum Card from American Express so it
earned 2x points but more importantly fulfilled the Discover Alberta promotion of a $50 statement credit for spending $250 or more at hotels
in Alberta.
All in all earning 31,200 points, potentially $100 in gift cards, no less than $14 in points with the credit card and receiving a $50 statement credit makes this an Earning Story worthy of sharing.
Wrapping it up
Even though I have been trying to rid myself of my Best Western points I ended up earning many more – which in the end isn’t a bad thing. As Best Western Rewards points don’t expire they can just sit there again until we go to this hotel and get two free nights if we want – but I’m not 100% sure about that though as the hotel seems to have gone downhill over the past few years. No matter what the points may come in handy for stays in some another small town somewhere or as a last resort transfer to Aeroplan or another airline program! There will always be a use for them. And as a lesson to all our readers – use those bonus offers! Register for them as soon as you learn about them and you’ll reap the rewards just as we did here.