Choice Privileges Mastercard Review: Strong Bonus Categories, but Limited Perks

Choice Privileges Mastercard Benefits

Popular Bonus Categories

With the Choice Privileges Mastercard, you’ll earn:

• 5x points on stays at participating Choice Hotels properties and on Choice Privileges point purchases
• 3x points at gas stations, grocery stores, home improvement stores and on phone plan services
• 1x points on all other purchases

When choosing a hotel credit card, aligning your natural spending with bonus categories is always a good place to start. This card includes gas and groceries, which are big budget items for many households, as well as home improvement stores and phone plan services. Depending on where you spend, those latter two categories may be incredibly handy or purely incidental.

To build on that, if you don’t spend in these categories, you’ll earn just 1 point per dollar spent, which isn’t much. So if you like to travel or dine out, or you spend at other places frequently, this wouldn’t be the best match for you.

It’s also worth mentioning that you’ll earn up to 16x total points at Choice hotels when you pay with the card. It breaks down like this:

• 5x points with the Choice Privileges Card
• Up to 10x points for being a Choice Privileges member
• 10% bonus points for having Gold elite status (which comes with the card)

That’s a healthy amount of points for your Choice hotel stays.

Automatic Gold Elite Status

While Choice Privileges isn’t known to be a particularly generous program, getting elite status with a no-annual-fee travel credit card is a nice benefit that gets you:

• 10% bonus points on paid stays
• Nine rollover nights per year
• Reserved parking where available
• Early check-in and late checkout when available
• An elite welcome gift of bonus points or a beverage and snack at check-in at participating hotels
• Room upgrades at certain hotels, when available

Other benefits are an elite customer service phone number and status match to Advantage level with PENN Play Rewards, which gets you perks at over 20 casinos around the country.

These extras can add a lot of value to your stays, provided they’re available. When I’ve stayed at Choice hotels, I’ve enjoyed the closer parking spots, which makes unloading three kids much easier, and the late checkout has given us wiggle room on days we needed extra time to get on the road.

We typically don’t stay at fancy hotels, so the room upgrades haven’t come into play, but if you stay at the upper end of Choice brands, like Cambria, the Ascend Hotel Collection, Radisson Blu or Park Plaza, you could end up with a suite or a room with a better view. These upgrades aren’t promised, but if you can get one, that’s pretty good just for holding the right card.

Cell Phone Protection

All of the best Wells Fargo cards feature cell phone insurance against damage, theft or accidental parting, and here, you’ll get up to $800 in coverage with a $25 deductible for two paid claims per 12-month period for replacement or repair. Note that it’s secondary, so it’ll pick up after any other insurance kicks in.

You need to pay your wireless bill with the card, and the good thing here is that you’ll earn 3x bonus points for doing so.

Choice Privileges Mastercard Drawbacks

Locked Into Choice Privileges Program

Technically, you can transfer your Choice points to a handful of airlines, spend them on a cruise or bid for an experience auction-style — with the caveat that these generally aren’t the best ways to redeem because of low overall value.

Instead, the best use of Choice points is for award stays at Choice hotels, and there are some genuinely good uses. But unlike flexible rewards points that offer a variety of transfer partners and redemption options, your Choice points will keep you on the hamster wheel of earning and redeeming at Choice hotels.

If this is what you want, it may not be such a big drawback, but most savvy travelers prefer more choices when it comes to credit card rewards.

Low Base Earning Rate

For purchases that don’t fall into a bonus category, you’ll earn 1 Choice point per dollar spent. This is a measly rate compared to cards that offer flat-rate rewards for your spending. If you don’t spend a lot at Choice hotels or in the other bonus categories, this card is an easy skip because of the low earning rate. In general, you want to maximize the bonus categories and use the bulk of your spending to capture more points.

Few Extra Built-in Benefits

For a travel credit card, there aren’t many travel benefits. The card does come with modest travel insurance, including:

• Auto rental collision damage waiver (CDW) that covers up to $50,000 for rentals up to 15 days in the US and up to 31 days outside the US (but note that coverage is secondary to your other insurance)
• Trip cancellation and interruption protection up to $5,000 per covered traveler per trip
• Lost luggage reimbursement up to $3,000 for all travelers per trip (again, note that coverage is secondary)
• Travel accident insurance worth up to $1,000,000 for covered losses

These protections can save you thousands should you need to use them, but they fall far short of what’s offered with other cards. Notably, there’s no primary rental car insurance, trip delay protection or baggage delay benefit. There’s also no purchase or extended warranty protection for covered purchases like some cards — even other no-annual-fee credit cards — offer.

Who Is the Choice Privileges Mastercard Best For?

See if you can relate: I have three small kids. When we travel, we usually drive, and we like to stop along the interstate and stay near family a few times per year. We don’t need luxury, just convenience. For us, that means free breakfast, a couple of beds (a pullout couch is a plus) and a clean room. We don’t care about extra perks, and we often spend on gas and groceries.

For us, a card like the Choice Privileges Mastercard is perfect. We earn bonus points easily, and the redemption rates for the hotels we like tend to be on the lower end. We’ll save our fancy travel for when the kids are older, but for now, Choice hotels are pretty much everywhere we want to go.

If any of that resonates, this card might benefit you, too. I also want to point out that Choice has several upscale brands, like Cambria, Radisson and Park Plaza. So if you want a couple of nicer quality stays, that’s a possibility. Here’s the full list of brands that fall under the Choice Privileges umbrella:

• Ascend Collection
• Cambria
• Clarion
• Clarion Pointe
• Comfort
• Country Inn & Suites
• Econo Lodge
• Everhome Suites
• MainStay Suites
• Park Inn
• Park Plaza
• Quality Inn
• Radisson
• Radisson Blu
• Radisson Collection
• Radisson Individuals
• Radisson Inn & Suites
• Radisson RED
• Rodeway Inn
• Sleep Inn
• Suburban Studios
• WoodSpring Suites (coming soon)

Is the Choice Privileges Mastercard Right for You?

You might consider picking up the Choice Privileges Card if you:

• Want to earn rewards without paying an annual fee
• Like the idea of earning enough rewards for a couple of stays each year
• Find Choice hotels conveniently located where you typically travel

Alternatives to the Choice Privileges Mastercard

If the Choice Privileges Card isn’t quite hitting the mark for you, consider these instead:

• Choice Privileges® Select Mastercard®: This is the big brother of the Choice Privileges Mastercard and a better option in just about every way. For a $95 annual fee, you’ll get 5x earnings in the same bonus categories, Platinum elite status for up to 22x points on Choice hotel stays and 30,000 bonus points every account anniversary. That can easily be worth the cost if you travel often or want to earn bonus points more quickly.
• Wells Fargo Autograph® Card: If you want Choice points, the Wells Fargo rewards you earn with the Autograph Card are transferable to Choice Privileges at a stellar 1:2 ratio. You’ll find some of the same categories, plus a couple more: 3x points on restaurants, travel, gas stations, transit, popular streaming services and phone plans. With the transfer ratio to Choice factored in, that translates to 6x points in those categories. Plus, there’s no annual fee. You’ll forgo the Choice elite status, but double up on earnings, which may be a worthwhile trade. And as a Wells Fargo card, you still get cell phone insurance.