Choice Hotels International and Air France KLM have launched a new partnership that provides the option to convert Choice Privileges Points in to Flying Blue Miles. The partnership is already live and it enables transfers from Choice to AF KLM at a ratio of 5,000 Privileges points to 1,000 Flying Blue Miles.
Is there value in this new option?
This is the same redemption ratio as Choice’s other airline partners such as Air Canada Aeroplan. At a 5 to 1 ratio, it’s not the greatest option for Choice points as typically you should be able to get more value out of them for hotel stays. Off the top of my head I would place a value of roughly 0.8 cents (C$) on a Choice Privileges point, which means that’s 4 cents of value being moved to get one Flying Blue mile. My minimum valuation of Flying Blue sits at 1.5 cents per mile, so that’s like losing 2.5 cents of value for every 5 points transferred out of Choice.
That being said, there is potential to pull similar value from Flying Blue even with the 5:1 ratio if you can get your redemption value up to around 4 cents per mile. And 4 cents per mile is possible on business class redemptions and I have even seen it on economy class awards flights to places like Algiers. So you do have to do some value comparisons to see if it is worth it to transfer to Flying Blue or if you will get more value by keeping them with Choice.
Other reasons you may want to use the transfer
For me personally, I don’t typically stay at Choice properties (It’s been at least 5 years since I have) and am sitting on a Choice Privileges balance that was bumped from up to 54 odd thousand points when they absorbed Radisson Rewards last year. So I may actually look at this option of converting to Air France KLM in the future as those points are just sitting with Choice, not being used, and the program has an 18 month inactivity rule which means I’ll need to move them out by the end of January 2025.
I won’t rush out to do it just yet, just in case the need for a hotel stay does come up but I’m happy to know this option is available. I mean I could always transfer to Aeroplan but my AF KLM account could use a little more padding so I would likely go with the latter.
Recommended reading: Expiry and Inactivity Rules of Canadian & International Loyalty Programs
Wrapping it up
It’s always great when loyalty program members receive more redemption options for their points and this is especially so for transferring between programs. Regardless of the redemption ratio, the more options you as a loyalty member have, the better. You never know when you might have orphaned points in a program that you do not use very often, so the ability to transfer them out to another program that you do use is ideal. That way you at least getting something for those points instead of nothing by losing them to inactivity. And now, we have one more option as Canadians to earn those now highly coveted Flying Blue Miles thanks to this new conversion option from Choice Privileges.
Click here to learn more about Choice Privileges airline transfer partners