Getting 2 free nights for every paid night with Club Carlson

Club Carlson has a new crappy promotion out, but I’m more concerned with the other great deals I’ll be getting in Europe this winter. But even if you aren’t going to Europe, I’ll show you an alternative. But right now I’m excited for Club Carlson’s low winter prices in Europe combined with their buy one get one free pricing. 2 paid nights in Budapest will get me 6 nights total in Budapest! Here’s how we’ll do it… The key is number 5: Award BOGOs.

1) Double Points = 47 points per dollar

This quarter’s promotion is double points, or double elite night credit. Given that the credit card gives gold status, the fact that gold is an easy status match, and “concierge” status requires 75 nights… it’s a no brainer to go for the points unless you’re actually going for “concierge” status.

While double points is a kind of lame promotion, it’s better than most with Club Carlson since they already give 20 points per dollar. Now we’re getting 40 points per dollar plus 35% with Gold status. Since Gold is easy to get, I’m just going to do all the math with 47 points per dollar.

Make sure you enroll here, for stays from Nov 4 – Dec 30.

 

2) 2-4-1 rates across Europe/ME/Africa

One of the best Gold benefits for Club Carlson is the 2-for-1 rates, or the 4-for-2. Click here to book the 2-for-1. Note that this is only available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. And it doesn’t work at the “Edwardian” hotels. Frankly, it doesn’t work at all hotels all the time.

If you’re doing the 2-for-1, basically, you check in on a Thursday or Friday night and get the following night free.

If you want to do the 4-for-2, you check in on a Wednesday or a Thursday and stay four nights, but only pay for the first two.

It’s an incredible deal when it works. And it seems to be working well this winter, as it’s off-season for a lot of Europe. I’ve got my eye on a number of options, that I hope work out. The most appealing is Budapest, although that’s where I like to burn my points too. But still, I’ll probably rotate.

 

In fact, I think I’ll do a Thursday to Monday at 4-for-2, and then do two nights on points at the Radisson Blu for 15,000 points, and then check in Wednesday for another 4-for-2. I’d spend 15,000 points and 276 Euros for 10 nights. Or just 276 Euros for 8 paid nights. Which is pretty good. And btw, the Art’otel is lower after taxes.

Okay, but let’s keep it simple and say 69 Euros/$86 for a two night stay in downtown Budapest. I really think this is a good deal, 50% off of low season prices.

But what does that get us? 47 points per dollar on the first night, and it completes other promotions. So 4,042 points just from this one example.

 

3) 3,000 points with the app, for the next two weeks.

When I land tonight I’ll have to test to see if the app can do the 2-for-1 rate, but there is a bonus of 3,000 points per app booking (details here). However, this is going away soon as you have to book (and stay?) by November 16th. But if you have a stay coming up, cancel and book on the app for another 3,000 points, and also enroll in the double points promo.

Wasn’t sure whether I should make this a main point since there are only a couple weeks left, but 3,000 points per booking will hopefully help out someone.

 

Dead Promos and what we’ve got so far…

Maybe you saw me mention things earlier about getting 7,500 AA miles after completing two stays, or 5,000 points after completing two stays. Unfortunately those links are now dead and you can no longer enroll. But if you’re like me and did enroll, let’s add that into the equation.

At this point we’re looking at two stays, and if it’s in Europe you could possibly get two nights downtown for $86 to $100.

So that $100 would get you:

• 1 paid night
• 1 free night with the Europe 2-for-1
• 4,700 points (at 47 points per dollar)
• 3,000 points with the app booking (until Nov 16)

Now do that twice, and you’ve got:

• 2 paid nights for $200
• 2 free nights with the Europe 2-4-1
• 9,400 points (at 47 points per dollar)
• 6,000 points with the app booking (until Nov 16)

For a total of 15,400 points and two free nights with the BOGO. Not killer by any means. But we’ll make lemonade here.

 

4) If you’re not going to Europe

If you’re not going to take advantage of the BOGO, you can get a lot of value out of specific hotel promotions. I pointed this out recently, but for example there are hotels in Orlando giving 10,000 points for a one night stay at $100. So do the same numbers as above but without the 2-4-1.

Here is a great resource for finding these little hotel promotions.

 

5) The Key is BOGO Awards from the Credit Card

The best perk of the Club Carlson credit card is the fact that you get a free night for every award booking you do of two nights or more. So we almost always do our award bookings two nights, and two nights only. This way we pay for one night and get two.

This is such an incredible deal that we really do make it a rule to only do two award nights in a row. However, you may know that I like to stay places longer. Like one time we stayed at the (former) Radisson in Salzburg 6 nights in a row. Well the key here is to break up the stay. Break up the stay with a paid stay, another person’s account, switch hotels, or have a business card account that also does the bogo.

Read my post: How to book Club Carlson BOGOs back to back

With this, we’re getting a bogo on the paid night end, and a bogo on the award end. So we earn 15,000 points from our paid stays, and guess what? The Radisson Blu in Budapest is 15,000 points. So we could stay with the paid bogo, and then later use points with a bogo. But more on that in a second…

Also, I don’t personally have an affiliate link for this card, but I noticed Greg from Frequent Miler does (click here), or use this as an opportunity to support another blogger you think has great content.

 

6) You can transfer from one account to the other.

At this point Carrie has the Club Carlson card and I do not. But I can just call Club Carlson and give Carrie’s info and transfer my points from my account to her account. This way she can book BOGO awards.

 

Totaling it up

Carrie’s account does:

• Two paid nights at $100 a night.
• + 2 free nights. Each paid night is on a weekend and we do the 2-4-1 rate.
• + 15,400 points – from paid stays and app booking
• + 7,500 AA miles – from an old promotion.

x2

I’ll do the exact same thing with my account. So take the above and x2.

But then I transfer my points to Carrie’s account so she has 30,800 points.

In total we’ll spend $400 and get:

• 4 paid nights
• 4 free nights from the 2-4-1 rate
• 4 nights at the Radisson Blu Budapest (2 for 15,000 points, and then 2 more with the BOGO from the credit card)
• 15,000 AA miles

Is $400 worth 12 nights and 15,000 AA miles? For me yes. That’s $33 a night plus the miles. $33 a night is for sure in my budget. In fact, it’s probably what I aim for. As a full time traveler, I can’t supplement all my hotel stays with free points. Instead, I focus on doing all my international flights with miles from credit cards, and all of my hotel stays from promotions… kind of like this.

Although, double points is nothing… it’s not anything compared to the 50,000 points from one night promo. But when a big promo like that comes along, hopefully you’ll have these principles in mind.

Also, $33 a night is good, but considering we’ll likely be using 20,000 AA miles for a oneway back from Europe, I would consider 15,000 AA miles a great value. It’s 3/4 of a one way to Europe. I paid $142 for my next flight to Europe (no miles), so considering, I’d say the miles are worth at least $100, if not more.

For me it’s about getting actual value back from my paid stays. As I posted recently with our IHG Stats, we did 42 paid stays with IHG and got nearly a million points and 116 free nights. This is entirely from promotions.

And actual value includes things you would have paid for anyways. Flights, hotel rooms, and even food. If you can get any of that free via miles, points or status, kudos. The question is how you can get more, and with Club Carlson you can get buy one get one free on the paid end and redemption end. So we’ll likely get at least 12 nights from our 4 paid nights. That’s actual value, and hopefully it will be even better with a better promotion.