Originally Posted by
christianj
There have been rumors for a while now that Jin Jiangs other hotels would be rolled into the program and that they would then be opened up for redemptions. Radisson even publicly announce this a couple of years ago. Now I’m not screaming that I want to stay at one of their properties in China BUT if I am not mistaken, Jin Jiang also owns Louvre Hotel Group and that might be something really interesting! For those that don’t know, Louvre owns and manages around 1200 properties under various brands including Golden Tulip, Kyriad and a high end group called Hotels & Preference which has around 150 luxury hotels. Details of the Louvre brands and the Preference properties can be found here:
Could we see all these rolled into the new program? It would be a dream come true and I would gladly go through the extra effort of transferring points between two programs to be able to use my Radisson points at some of those Preference Hotels.
I was actually hoping that Radisson was going to incorporate Golden Tulip and Campanile into the portfolio. But now, even if that were to happen, they would not be in the "Americas" program. And judging by the email I received from them, I will be placed into the Americas program. And I think this has to do with the fact that several years ago I did stay a few times at two of their properties in the States: the Radisson at LAX and the one at DCA. Ironically, both of those hotels are no longer part of the chain. What is also confusing is that I cannot willingly choose to be in the "Other" program, but I will have to set up an account with them nonetheless if I want to redeem an award at one of those properties, as well as stay at one while paying a cash rate.
I look forward to the more information they will be telling us later this month. But at this point, I'm going to eventually exit this program once all my points have been used up. And what's funny is that had Radisson done a halving of their elite threshold requirements this year (like Hilton and Hyatt did), I would seriously have tried to reach Platinum status. I used to have it in the past (but wasn't it called Concierge, or somethng?), and the breakfast benefit would be something I could make use of, since there are no Hampton or Holiday Inn Express type of brands within the Radisson portfolio in Europe.