A couple days ago, I got this email from Club Carlson on 2 July to be exact. On first glance, it looks like a standard “look what a great program we are” email.
Redeem Your Points for Rich Rewards
Club CarlsonSM is proud to offer you first-class redemption options, including faster Free Award Nights at more than 1,000 participating Carlson Rezidor hotels worldwide.
As a member, you can redeem your Gold Points® for:
- Free Award Nights starting at just 9,000 points with no blackout dates on standard rooms
- Award Nights using Points+Cash starting at 5,000 points
- Donations to World Childhood Foundation and redemptions for Carbon Footprint
- Express Rewards for in-hotel awards such as room upgrades, food and beverage credits, laundry credits (where available)
- Airline miles at more than 20 airlines at a rate of 10 Gold Points per one airline mile; please note, our airline mileage redemption options have changed effective July 1, 2013
Learn more about all of your exclusive Club Carlson benefits.Club Carlson. Loyalty Applauded. Awarded. Rewarded.
Date of email 2 July. Date of devaluation 1 July.
People on FlyerTalk saw it first and the news quickly spread to other travel blogs. No one was THAT upset over the increase in airline miles redemptions. What we were upset about is the lack of advance notice so we could redeem at the rates we signed up for if we so desired. Messages to Club Carlson on Facebook and Twitter have only met with a canned reply copy/pasted to everyone.
Now in most cases, transferring to airline miles isn’t always the best use of hotel points but if you need to top up for a special award they can be very useful. I had earmarked 100k Club Carlson points for 18k United to top up what I need for the trip to Africa in 2015. I did however note that around Nov/Dec last year, United had a partner bonus promo so I was anticipating they would have one again this year so I had not transferred the Club Carlson points yet. If I had know about the devaluation, I would have done my transfer beforehand. I have enough points to easily cover the chain hotels I need for the next couple years at least and can spare the 100k for miles.
For many of us, it takes time to save up for rewards, especially when there is a tier structure with a higher amount gaining a better transfer rate.
This is what it was before.
- 2,000 points = 250 miles
- 50,000 points = 8,000 miles
- 100,000 points = 18,000 miles
This is what it is now:
- 2,000 points = 200 miles
- 50,000 points = 5,000 miles
- 100,000 points = 10,000 miles
While hotel points are of limited value to eco-tourists, they still have value whether for free hotel nights or airline miles and if you spend most of your time in eco-lodges you will probably have more use for airline miles. There are some good redemptions for eco-travelers such as this one in Panama.
Bottom line is I don’t feel very “applauded, awarded, rewarded” right now. I did go to a lot of trouble to acquire those points and even bought some during a flash sale a couple week ago to top off my needs for both airline miles and hotels for the next couple years. Loyalty is a two-way street and Club Carlson needs to learn that. They do have some nice hotels but we don’t HAVE to be loyal to Club Carlson to book them. We can use Pointshound (my referral link), Expedia, Hotels.com or dozens of other booking sites.
I challenge Club Carlson to do the right thing and give a grace period of at least 72 hours for people to redeem at the old rates. True, their hotel rewards are still a good deal but who can say they won’t do the same thing with them in the future. For now, don’t sit on your points, if you have them, use them up. Then be loyal to yourself. Use the credit cards if you get a free or super-cheap night out of them but do your bookings wherever you get the best benefit.