Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
Is there evidence that the card business was costly to Radisson? Most travel companies seem to make a ton of money (rev and profit) off their affiliate card programs. And with 2nd award night free benefit killed years ago, I don’t know why the card would have been unprofitable for Radisson. Seems like a lot of people here are sitting on a big pile of points from the card for an unspecified future stay. Certainly that was true for me.
If the card business were still very lucrative to Radisson, they would have rushed to maintain and build the card business in the run-up to prepping themselves for the announced sale and/or to maximize their valuation (for sale or for acquisition purposes) instead of doing what they did with staffing decisions and the card business.
I would be very surprised if customer acquisition costs for the cards were not considered a problem for those eager to up their cost-containment efforts at the company.