Holiday Inn, Best Western, others ?
 

Hello to you all,
Thanks for your posts that helped us to prepare our 20 days round trip through Colorado, Utah and Arizona scheduled next fall (30/9-17/10)
We are french, living between Monaco and Nice and not really aware of hotel ratings in your part of the world.
We have a question to-day regarding hotel/motel chain reward programs.
Is there any chance that, if we stay every night of our trip in a different hotel of the same hotel chain, we could be rewarded by one or more (?) free night (s) ?
Merci for your answer. Should you need any information about Monaco, St Jean Cap Ferrat or Eze, i ll do my best to help if i can.

If you sign up for their frequent stay programs (Holiday Inn's is called priority club), you amass points by staying at the hotels. Once you reach enough points, you earn a free stay. However, I would not count on earning enough points with one trip to use a free stay on that same trip. For one, many programs only offer so many "free" rooms per night, and once they are gone, you cannot use your points for a stay. It does require a bit of advanced planning, not unlike using frequent flier airline miles.

Some of the Reward programs take as long as one month to post your stays - some shorter, and it seems to vary not by chain but by individual hotel (many, although carrying the chain name are actually individually owned and operated).

As far as which chain of hotels, we have had good luck with Best Western chain.

With Priority Club (the program for Holiday Inn and other sister chains), you earn 10 points for each $1 spent. It usually takes 15,000 or 25,000 (depending on property) to get a free night at a Holiday Inn.

Say you spent average of $80/night. You need to do that 20 times to get 16,000 points.

I would not limit myself to just one chain on a trip like yours. Do sign up with the various programs after you decide where you're staying for each night - they're free, and sometimes you do get some preferred treatments like rooms on a special (higher) floor, free newspaper, etc. Just don't do it because of trying to get a free night.

Holiday Inn's Priority Club allows you to receive airline frequent flyer miles (your choice) instead of hotel points. I stayed at a Holiday Inn last week and was given a nice room upgrade, without even asking.