Last updated 22 September 2026

Who we are

The Choice Hotels Owners Council (“CHOC”, “we”, “us”) is an independent association of Choice Hotels franchise owners. This policy explains how we handle personal information collected through choiceowners.com, including the members-only area of the site.

CHOC is not owned, operated or controlled by Choice Hotels International, and information you give us here is not shared with the franchisor.

Information we collect

When you…	We collect
Apply for membership	Your name, email address, chosen username and password, phone number, the city and state of your property, your Choice property code, your brand, and your CHOC region.
Use the contact form	Your name, email address, whether you are a member, and your subject and message. These are emailed to CHOC administrators; the website does not keep a copy.
Sign in to the member area	Session cookies that keep you signed in, and a record of administrative actions taken on your account (see Membership records below).
Simply browse the site	Anonymous usage statistics — pages viewed, links and buttons clicked, approximate location by region, device type and browser. See Analytics below.
Register for an event	Event registration is handled by the event host on their own website, under their privacy policy. We receive only the attendee list they provide to us.

We ask for property details because CHOC membership is tied to ownership of a Choice-branded hotel, and because your region determines which regional director represents you.

How we use your information

• To review and approve your membership application.
• To operate the member area — the dashboard, member directory, documents and member benefits.
• To assign you to the correct CHOC region and put you in touch with your regional director.
• To send you council news, event invitations and notices about your membership.
• To answer messages you send us.
• To keep the site secure and to understand, in aggregate, which pages members find useful.

We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising or profiling.

Who can see your information

Other members

Approved members who are signed in can view the CHOC member directory, which lists each member’s name, role, region and city. Your email address, phone number, property code and password are never shown in the directory. The directory is not visible to the public or to search engines.

CHOC officers and administrators

Members of the Executive Committee and site administrators can see the full details on your application in order to approve it and to administer your account.

Service providers

A small number of companies process data on our behalf so the site can function: our web host, our email delivery provider, Google (analytics and spam protection), and Automattic (comment and form spam filtering). They may only use the data to provide their service to us.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or where it is necessary to protect the rights and safety of CHOC and its members.

Cookies and your choices

Cookies are small files stored by your browser. This site uses them for three things:

• Essential cookies — keep you signed in to the member area and remember your consent choices. The site cannot work without these.
• Analytics cookies — help us count visits and see which pages are used. Set only if you agree.
• Security — Google reCAPTCHA sets a cookie to tell real visitors from automated bots on our registration and contact forms.

When you first visit, a banner lets you accept all cookies, accept only essential ones, decline, or set your own preferences. Until you choose, analytics storage stays switched off and only anonymous, cookieless signals are sent. You can change your choice at any time from the cookie preferences link on the site.

Analytics

We use Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google Tag Manager, to understand how the website is used. It records pages viewed, actions taken such as opening a document or filtering the region map, the type of device and browser, and an approximate location derived from your IP address. Your IP address is not stored — Google discards it after working out the approximate location.

For signed-in members, we also record whether the visitor is a member, director or administrator, and which region they belong to. This is used to tell member activity from public activity in reports. No name, email address, username, phone number, property code or directory search term is ever sent to Google.

Analytics data is kept for 14 months and then deleted automatically. We have switched off Google Signals, cross-device User-ID tracking, advertising features and remarketing. You can opt out of Google Analytics entirely by installing the Google Analytics opt-out browser add-on, or by declining analytics cookies in our banner.

Spam protection and site security

Our registration and contact forms are protected by Google reCAPTCHA v3, which analyses how the page is used to distinguish people from bots. Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply to that processing. Contact form submissions are also checked by Akismet, a spam filtering service operated by Automattic.

Our web host keeps standard server logs, including IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.

Membership records

So that the council has an accountable record of its own decisions, we log administrative actions taken on member accounts — when an application was approved, denied, suspended or reactivated, when a role was changed, who did it, and the IP address it was done from. These entries are visible only to site administrators and are kept as a permanent record of council governance.

How long we keep your information

Information	Kept for
Your member profile	As long as your membership is active, and for a reasonable period afterwards for council records.
Contact form messages	Held in CHOC administrators’ email only; not stored on the website.
Analytics data	14 months, then deleted automatically by Google.
Administrative records	Retained permanently as a record of council decisions.
Server logs	A short period set by our web host, for security purposes.

Your rights and choices

• See and correct your details. Sign in and use My Account to view and update your profile at any time.
• Request a copy. Ask us for a copy of the personal information we hold about you.
• Ask us to delete it. We will remove your personal information, other than what we must keep for legal, security or council record-keeping purposes.
• Unsubscribe. Every CHOC email has an unsubscribe link; you can also email us. Notices that are essential to your membership will still be sent.
• Withdraw cookie consent. Change your choice at any time from the cookie preferences link.

Depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state privacy laws, including the right not to be discriminated against for exercising them. To make any request, contact us using the details below. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under US state privacy laws.

Children

This website is intended for hotel owners and their staff. It is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us with information, please contact us and we will delete it.

Links to other sites

Our pages link to partner organisations, benefit providers and event hosts. Once you follow a link, you are on their website and their privacy policy applies. We are not responsible for how they handle your information.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the website and the council’s programs change. The date at the top shows when it was last revised. If a change materially affects how we use member information, we will tell members by email.