Sharing makes life better — greetings, everyone. I’m Suanhaoer, the one who loves stir-fried pork!

The hotel group I’m covering today had a Black Friday promo that was genuinely strong: the offer was roughly “stay one night, get a slow-season night free.” For the latest details, see the hotel-promo roundup on the blog homepage. That group is Best Western. The official Chinese transliteration is 贝斯特韦斯特; I prefer the literal name 最佳西方, and I’ll call it BW for short. The latest group logo looks like this.

(1) The hotels

Best Western International was founded in California in 1946 and is now headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona. It started as an informal grouping of just seven independent hotels and has grown into a chain with more than 4,100 member hotels in 100-plus countries and territories, and more than 300,000 rooms — the world’s largest hotel chain under a single brand. Outside the United States and Canada, BW is also the largest hotel group in France, Italy, and Germany.

On brands: BW currently has 19 brands across six families, covering everything from luxury down to economy.

(2) Best Western Rewards

Best Western Rewards — 倍优客俱乐部 in Chinese — is BW’s loyalty program. Members sit in five tiers (Blue / Gold / Platinum / Diamond / Diamond Select). Base earning is spend-based: 10 points per US$1, and points never expire.

Platinum and above come with more stay benefits, but breakfast — the perk frequent travellers care about most — does not appear at any tier. That can sting. If you are not staying often, pick hotels that already include breakfast when you book.

The first shortcut to elite status is a status match. BW runs other hotel groups’ status-match offers year-round. The current match page is Status Match | Best Western Rewards. My own Diamond Select top-tier status came from matching Marriott’s entry-level Platinum.

For using points, award nights are the ideal. In practice, 8,000-point nights are hard to find on BW’s site; the award nights you can actually book start around 10K and go up to 70K. Points can also offset a cash stay at 5K points for US$25. You can transfer BW points into several airline programs at different ratios. For those of us based in Canada, Aeroplan, Alaska Mileage Plan, and Cathay Asia Miles are the ones we use most.

(3) How to book

BW’s best-rate guarantee is called Lowest Rates, Guaranteed. Frequent travellers use this booking trick a lot. Even today, when a hotel group’s own site already shows a “member rate,” you can still come out ahead by finding a lower price on a comparison site and claiming BRG — especially at resort-style hotels, where a cheaper rate is easier to find. Successful BRG claims get the lower rate plus a US$100 gift card from BW. Not bad.

The details: Low Rate Guarantee | Best Western Hotels & Resorts

BW also has a credit card in the United States. The welcome offer is points you can put toward a stay.

The other booking tip is the limited-time promo mentioned at the start of this article — for example, buying BW gift cards on sale to cut the cost of a stay. The most recent one was buy a US$100 gift card, get US$20 extra. It ended on November 30. If you have a stay coming up, keep an eye out for similar offers; they show up from time to time.

The people who make BW their main hotel group usually are not leaving a large budget for a place to sleep — or BW is the only game in town at their destination. Alaska is a good example: in places the big chains have not reached, a smaller group like this is often the most practical choice for a frequent traveller.