The news is out that Club Carlson’s credit card is killing the free night per award booking. But do you really know how to maximize the free Club Carlson night? All too many people use the Club Carlson benefit like they intend, and I’ll show you how to use it the way I use it.
I’ve just been giving a lot of thought as to how I’m going to spend my current Club Carlson balance. I have a few ideas and a few rules for booking.
Always book 2 night stays
The way that the benefit works is that you get 1 free award night per award booking of 2 nights or more. So if you stay 2 nights, you only pay for 1. That’s 50% off. But if you stay 3 nights, that’s 33% off as you still only get 1 free night. And if you book a single 4 night stay, you still only get 1 free night, a 25% savings.
25% is unacceptable!
Instead of booking a single 4 night stay, you need to book 2 different 2 night stays, getting 2 different free nights. Make sense?
The problem is that the computer won’t let you. If it sees a free night award at a hotel it won’t let you book another one where the dates are back to back.
Here’s how you get around that and book 4 nights, for example where you pay for 2 and get 2 free nights.
1) Use different accounts
You can book the first 2 nights, and if your partner has the card as well, have them book the second 2 nights.
2) Use a business account
For reasons unknown to me, the Club Carlson Business credit card created a new rewards number. So if you have one already, log in and book the second 2 nights with that account.
3) Transfer points to a friend
Club Carlson allows gold members to transfer points to anyone for free just by calling. Super easy. Transfer the needed amount to a friend who also has the card.
4) Switch hotels
If you want to do 4 nights in London but only have 1 credit card, just switch hotels. Spend 2 nights at one then 2 nights at another.
5) Break it up with a stay in the middle
This is now a 5 night stay, but switching hotels can be a pain. What I’ve done before is booked Mon/Tue as an award with a free night award. Then I go book Thur/Fri, also as an award using the free night benefit. Then I go in and book a night for Wed, as a cash & points, paid stay or a single award night.
Book even if you can’t use them. Free cancelations
Award nights have free cancelations like a best flexible rate. Make plans as best as you can and in the last week of May, book up all your points. Worst case scenario is that you have to cancel because you wouldn’t have used it anyways. No loss at all. Best case scenario you double your value.
Don’t go somewhere just for Club Carlson but take best guesses as to your travel plans in the future. Personally I don’t know where I’ll be this Monday, don’t have any tickets anywhere but will definitely need one. But I’m going to try to book some hotels for places I want to go later this year.
Use the Complete Map of Club Carlson properties to check out some of the options.
Best Club Carlson hotels
We’ve personally stayed 60+ nights already in 2015 with Club Carlson, so I’ll try to give some advice from personal experience. Personally I’m very hit/miss with Radisson. Some hotels are junk and some are great. But it’s best to keep your expectations super low when it comes to Club Carlson.
High end Radisson Blu hotels:
- You can’t go wrong with a Radisson Blu in London or Paris. The cost of hotels in those cities can be insane and there are some well located downtown hotels in a cool city… plus Paris.
- Radisson Blu Vienna – Vienna is a favorite city of mine and the Radisson Blu is my favorite location.
- Radisson Blu Sydney – We were only there 1 night before the bogo benefit, but Sydney is another expensive city, but the hotel is in walking distance to the opera house.
- Norway – I haven’t been here but was thinking of going later this year and everything is super expensive and there aren’t a lot of points options with most other chains. Yet Club Carlson has tons of hotels all over Scandinavia and the surrounding area.
Low category club Carlson hotels:
- India – I found the Country Inn & Suites in places like Amritsar to be pretty nice.
- Radisson Blu Budapest – Good location, 1970s décor.
- Egypt? – Haven’t been but there are some 9,000 point hotels – in Alexandria and Sharm.
Personally, I’m trying to decide what I want to do with Club Carlson points. Go back to India? Go back and burn them at a city I’d otherwise not spend a lot of time in but enjoy – like Sydney or London.
Or perhaps somewhere new. Help me decide – here are some of my ideas of new places I could burn my points at: Northern Europe (Norway, Estonia, and Latvia), Tunisia (Hammamet and Djebra), Ecuador (Quito/Guayaquil), or the Middle East (Lebanon and not sure where else).
Conclusion
The main thing I wanted to share is the list of ways to book back to back. Surprisingly a lot of people book 4 nights straight when they don’t have to.
So far I have booked :
– 2 x 2-night stays in NoLa for next year’s JazzFest,
– 2-night stay in Vienna for President’s Day/Valentines next year
– 2-night stay at the Mayfair in London for next year’s Chelsea Flower Show in May
– 2-night stay in Tel Aviv in July
Still have almost 400k points that I would like to use up a bit more and am trying to decide on places that I would like to explore for long weekends. Any fun properties in the Caribbean or Latin America?
Sounds like some good uses.
I actually haven’t used club carlson many places in latin america or the Caribbean. The Caribbean is tempting to me. I’ve heard good things about Grenada and Barbados in terms of the islands. I have no interest in Port of Spain, Trinidad… at all. Heard good things about the Radisson in Aruba.
In terms of Latin America I don’t see many hotels I want to visit with Club Carlson.
Oh, the Radisson in Puerto Rico was terrible. Like… terrible. First of all the lobby is a really old casino with old people dancing. The rooms are… also very dated. But the location was awful. Walking distance to the highway. A long drive from anywhere I’d want to be. Otherwise I’d use the map and just browse for places you want to go.
Thanks for the advice! I would like to do Grenada, but from NYC the flights are all full-day travel affairs involving a layover, which makes a two-night stay a little impractical 🙁
The Radisson Aruba is in the process of being sold, and the rumor is that it will become a Hilton. However, supposedly they are still taking reservations and will honor them.
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/carlson-club-carlson/1654964-radisson-aruba-become-hilton.html
Thanks for the heads-up. I just booked them for MLK weekend in Jan of next year.
Say what you will about devaluations, but at least they act as a great motivator and reminder to burn points lol
The Radisson Puerto Rico is closing down and bad as it was I didn’t care as our main interest was the El Yunque Rainforest by rental car so we could have used the free nights. Now I don’t know what to do with my left over CC points as they just don’t seem to have properties where we are going. Nothing near my family in California. We are going to POS but there are eco-lodges I would rather stay at there. We can burn a few points seeing family in Minnesota. Maybe I can rework the stay in BOG so we can make a day trip to the national park nearby and use the Radisson. It’s such a PITA using these damn points which is why we’ve gone indie except for the annual IHG Chase cert.
We stayed at TLV last year, nice property and we had a great view of the Med Sea! The Radisson Blu in Nice was “ok” but the location was fantastic if you are headed that way.
Gotta give a shout-out to the Martinique in NYC. Not the fanciest, but it’s a 1920’s building designed by the same architect that did the Empire State Building. I always feel as I’ve walked into Boardwalk Empire when I visit.
Any advice on the carlson hotel in Bratislava? I am thinking of using the BOGO at the 9000 pt Park Inn there after spending way too much at the Rad Blu in Vienna. Expectations are low but I am wondering if you are familiar with the location or anything else.
I loved Bratislava. Stayed there two nights in July 2013 at the Park Inn. Park Inn was fine, and only 9000 points for two nights. Bratislava is so much cheaper and more authentic than Vienna or Prague!
Thanks Mike! Great to have some confirmation from someone who has stayed there.
With Club Carlson, don’t you need to book at least 3 nights at one hotel to get 1 free night. If a hotel is 50K a night and you book 2 nights, its 100K for the 2 nights, not 50K. If you book 3 nights, its 100K (50K off, free night), not 150K. How are you booking 2 nights for 100K and only using 50K (50% off/free night)?
John,
I was under the same impression will have to test this out!
Because it’s B1G1 on a stay of two or more nights, so the second night is free.
I like the dig at Paris.
I’ve booked in for next summer in Rome and Dresden. It is hard to plan travel that far in advance.
If you cancel your card before your booked stays, will they still honor the free 2nd night stay?
We just burned some points in Norway. There are tons of Club Carlson choices in Oslo. Stayed at Radisson Blu Scandinavia and we were upgraded to a Buisness Class room with an awesome view. It is a really easy location for getting around, right next to a Tram stop and really walking distance to everything.
The less expensive eats are on the other side of Oslo, maybe a 15 minute stroll. That is also the younger hip side of town, but we met some locals that took us to a bar with “the cheapest beer in Oslo” it was right by the Tram stop for our hotel.
Great post, but I love even more the fact that I saw it pop up on Saverocity :-).
Another way to extend stays and more free nights. The first time we applied for the premium card, we were downgraded to the lesser card. Very disappointed until we applied again for the premium card, were approved, and were “forced” to have a second personal club Carlson account, just like the business card. Now, between the two of us, we have two rooms for four nights this summer in Athens for152,000 points. And if they give us the 30,000 point bonus for each account, like has been reported, we will get back 120,000 of those points.
Hi Drew,
Thanks for your timely reminders and great insights.
We can recommend Riga, Latvia, as an interesting visit. Lots to see and do, and reasonably priced. Our family of 4 was upgraded to an Executive Room (we have the credit card) with a nice view over the Old Town (5 minute walk). Radisson Blu Hotel Latvija, was our hotel, but there are several other Radissons we saw that also looked nice.
Nice dig at Paris up above in the London/Paris section 😉
We stayed in Ireland at CC in Limerick and Dublin airport. I REALLY liked the breakfast that came with the room. so =free food too. We did paid stays for a promo in Ireland though. We stayed on points at Champs-Elysees 3 nights 2 rooms = bad redemption, but too hard to move a family! Being too cheap sometimes is not smart! Budapest property was okay, but hotels there are practically free anyway. We’ve got stays booked in Belgium for end of the summer. I’m thinking I’ll probably keep the cards because I think I can still get value for the annual fee.
Spent 18 nights @ Radisson Aruba on two visits past Winter. Upgraded to suites on both bookings. We both have the card and were very content in Aruba. Have 10 nights booked in Grenada over Thanksgiving. Flying out of JFK non-spot on JetBlue’s new route on miles. Need to burn another 350K points by end of May. Looking to Stay @ the Radisson Suites near Disneyland in California. Want to take the new Alaska route from BWI – LAX. Status matched SW companion pass to Alaska MVPGold75 and will use the 4 guest upgrades to 1st. New route has double miles and only cost $184 during promo. Should net close to 50K Alaska miles on 2 round trip tixs. I will also keep the Club Carlson card as I still see good value.