NJUPINTHEAIR

Well, they made me do it given the 2nd Free Night is going bye bye!

My account now has only 907 points and my wife's has even less, standing at a paltry 526 points.

I have booked 2 night rewards @ the following:

1). Radisson Blu Paris Champs Elysee, twice -- each stay separated by a 1 night sojourn at the Indigo Paris using my credit card Free Night from the Chase IHG M/C -- I was tempted to just go with the IC Paris Marceau which is just down the street from the Radisson, but the 17 square meter rooms at the IC put me off!,

2). Park Plaza RiverBank in London immediately followed by,

3). Park Plaza County Hall and then onto,

4). Radisson Blu Style Vienna.

If a 6,000 point Alamo car rental posts before the deadline, I'll change the RiverBank to the Park Plaza Westminster.

Still undecided if I will make the effort to put 1 stay under the belt to earn the 30,000 bonus points -- probably will wait to see if any better promotions are launched this summer.

Probably will still opt for the car rental bonuses as they are the best out there and it could not hurt to have some reserve CC points around for a cheap 1 night stay somewhere when and if needed.

Good luck to the rest of you!

xooz

I will likely do something similar, just to maximize the value of my current points. But Carlson is still a reasonable value for me, since I get almost all my points from credit cards rather than paid stays. $10,000 spend gets me 10K SPG points or 40Kish Hilton points, or 50K Carlson points. There are several London Radissons that are not bad, so I would use Carlson points for a London stays, as an example, since I would not find a SPG or Hilton at comparable 'spend" values.

Still sad to see the extra night benefit go but I won't be dumping my Carlson credit card unless they do something further.

Happy

The room at the Radisson Champs isn't much bigger than 17 m.

Not sure if you have stayed at HI Notre Dame, its room while small, is still BIGGER than that at Radisson. Room is very dark too, dark color decor and insufficient lighting. We spent 2 nights at HI Notre Dame followed 2 nights at Radisson Champs and frankly preferred HI where is our normal go to location for sojourn at Paris. Been using it since it was only 25K a few years back. HI has a roof top bar and a nice view of Eiffel Tower.

aviator8

yep just did the same. booked 475,000 pts of stays over the next year between wife and myself. have a few more to do.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Thanks, Happy.

I could have sworn that it said that the room was 25 sq. meters. Well, anyway, I needed to clean out the CC account and I already had this European trip planned so did some jujitsu and evaporated the 3 nights I was going to stay at the Paris Indigo to fit in with using these CC points.

Then, scotched the idea of the 5 nights at the Boscolo Exedra or the Grand Flora at the old Cat 8 Marriott rates in favor of 3 nights at the Rome Indigo.

Finally, was thinking of 2 nights at the Radisson in Rome but it was too funky and the neighborhood was too skeevy for me to book there. Instead, will do 2 nights at the Sheraton Roma which is now a Cat 2 property since SPG seems to be the only chain, besides Hyatt, that actually believes in re-categorizing hotels downwards, before we fly out to Paris.

In any event, I don't think that the HI Notre Dame is at 25,000 points anymore -- I think it is at 35,000 points like most of the other PAris IHG properties.

Hopefully might get an upgrade at the Radisson Blu as I still have Gold thru 2/16.

Good luck to all of you in emptying your accounts, and perhaps you guys might like to lengthen this thread with what you plan to do with your points, and where, as well?? It could help others identify some places to use their points at , as well! @:-)

This is what the web page says for the Radisson Blu Champs:

I sleep on a Queen at home so that won't require any adjustment.

NJUPINTHEAIR

You are absolutely correct in that analysis, as you have said, it is just too bad that the discontinuation of the 2nd night benefit means only 1 night per 50,000 points instead of 2.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Where are you headed?

Happy

May be you have better luck, but our experiences have been, Gold means nothing at Club Carson properties, WORSE than the Plat at IHG properties. It really sets the new standard of worthless elite status in hotel programs (not counting the Choice, Best Western and the like).

We have stayed about 18 nights in various Club Carlson properties since we got the CCs 2 years ago - only on 2 occasions we get a room upgrade of any kind - art'otel in Colognes gave us a river view room. Radisson Blu Amsterdam gave us a business room at the new wing but stressed the breakfast was not included. In fact in room there was a display framed in acrylic specifically points out Business Room via Upgrade does not include breakfast... Over 75% of the time the hotel did not even recognize elite status. We got a single peach at Park Inn at Stuttgart - yes, one peach on a glass plate was delivered to our room shortly after check-in, some artfully displayed gummy bears at art'otel when we returned in the evening. That was it.

I dont have a feeling on how 25 sq meter would look like but the room is very cramp. There is only one chair and a small round coffee table by the window, plus a buffet type cabinet with the TV on top facing the bed. The space between the bed and the cabinet only allows one person to pass thru. The biggest issue of the room is the very dim lighting. Oh, you will also find a very stupidly designed washing basin in the bathroom - seems being carved out from one piece of very dark colored stone with an extremely shallow, angled bottom. No stopper. Barely holds 2 to 3 inches of water on the deep end which is about 1/4 of the whole basin. It is about The most stupid style of all the "new square/elongate/rectangle styles" washing basins we have encountered in recent years over 150 hotel nights. Extremely impractical. Talk about Form over Function - this takes it to an absurd level.

BUT, it is still great use of the CC pts, especially in light of the huge devaluation!

HI Notre Dame is at 35K since 2 or even 3 years ago. And often out of award inventory quickly.

The Club Carlson property in Rome is in a bad location - bad neighborhood near Termini. You wouldn't want to stay there.

We also modified our upcoming trip in Apr/May that has a 7 days in Germany portion which already has Radisson in Dusseldorf before the news, now to include Brussels in it so we can burn 50K at Brussels, also replaced the Hilton Mainz by Radisson Frankfurt to burn another 50K. The Brussels property has an "ouch" 35 euro parking per day though... The other portions of the trip are in Barcelona and in Tokyo and Osaka - 0 Club Carlson property.

Currently making speculative bookings in London this Sept for 3 x 2 days prior a potential TATL cruise - because the ships sail on different days and we do not know which one we would take, hence the 3x 2 days. We most likely would use 4 days - enough time to revisit museums, Kew Garden, Hampton Court or Windsor. Cannot find ANY availability on the Park Plaza Westminster during the whole 6 days period... Looked at the Plaza on the River despite the 70K but spacious 40 sq meter studio - then reading the TA found out that there were rooms facing the inside courtyard with a view of 4 walls! Cannot take that risk to get stuck in such a room!

Another speculative bookings at Copenhagen in case we take a Spring TATL in 2016.

Would still have over 200K left after the above. Sigh.

OHijAAzi73

Would love to burn my 1.5 million CC stash lol.... but don't have the freaking time since I just opened my new biz...any insights about redeeming for friends and family WITH the bonus award night?

cruisr

OMG, seriously? 1.5M. I feel your pain.

bigbuy

Dang, you sure made me feel better. I only have a half a million to burn

GUWonder

Ouch.

I'm trying to run down my Carlson points stash which is just about half of that, but I don't have enough time to do that in the way I'd like. Hopefully you still have enough open vacation days and/or weekend days to use those.

To answer your question: yes, but it's not necessarily all risk free unless you show up to check-in. It may be more of a problem in places where they check ID at check-in (and maybe even store the ID copy) than at other places. On other reservation types, it makes sense to add the name of the additional guest no matter the reservation type -- in case there is a lost key issue or a travel disruption issue if traveling separately.

lawyeraaron

You can make reservations quite far in advance. You might as well make some for trips you think you might take and then cancel if you don't make the trips. Usually award bookings can be cancelled up until a day or two before arrival. That way if you make the trip you get the free night, but if not, you get the points back. Of course, read the terms of use for each booking, but I would give it a try.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Thanks for the foreshadowing of the Paris property -- seems like they took a book out of the form over function rule from the Rome property!

But, as you note, burn, baby, burn.

I had noticed that the HI Notre Dame always seemed to be sold out -- now I know why!

FWIW, I think the Hilton Mainz just decreased a rewards category yesterday.

I was thinking of going to Trier and using the CC property there, now that will have to wait for another day, etc.

Wow good luck with burning those points, I had a hard enough time assigning mine -- luckily Christmas time was generally wide open and we had the time -- not the best time to be in Europe but perhaps we can tage advantage of the after Christmas sales in the non-latin countries with our strong dollar!

That is one heck of a trip you are doing -- Europe and Asia in one fell swoop!

In North America, one might take a look into the Radisson Blu in Chicago or the Toronto Harbor Front property.

All big chain hotels in Chicago are at the top of their reward categories and the CC property is in a great location, so burning 50,000 points there is a good thing -- also summer in Chi town is nice and there are many thematic festivals, only Blues fest and Taste of Chicago are already sold out.

Same goes for the Toronto property, sadly, Carifest is also sold out now, but other summer dates are wide open.

NJUPINTHEAIR

Frugal Travel Guy reports that he was able to book thru 12/2016!

I will cancel some of my winter bookings and see if this is true.

If so, that would be a big help to many!