Help required for Old Newbie
 

Hello

I have got 100K Club Carlson points achieved by staying in a Radisson Hotel for 10 weeks.

I would like to convert these points to air miles to enable me to take my better half somewhere "nice".

Can I convert all these points to air miles?

How do I get a "frequent flyer" number?

Is a frequent flier number mandatory?

Do I find a participating airline, select the flights required and buy as normal, except for using cash?

All help greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Alex

Can I convert all these points to air miles? Yes you can. Club Carlson will allow you to exchange to certain airlines. However, the exchange rate isn't that great. 100k CC points is worth 10,000 ailine miles. This isn't even enough for a single, one-way domestic US flight.

If you fly somewhere with your partner, won't you need a place to stay as well? The points are worth far more towards hotel stays than as airline miles.

Link: https://www.clubcarlson.com/fgp/rede...y:airlinemiles

BigEck Welcome to FT
As above you would be better to buy the air fares with cash and use the points for a hotel. Far better value.

Frequent flyer programs are/can be complicated until you understand how they work
For the frequent flyer award flight you buy from the airline web site/phone with ff miles. Award flights are limited and airline ffp release awards from 331/335 days out. Award flights can be very hard/impossible to get close to date a flight.
Some airlines have the option of paying a regular flight with miles instead of cash. These are often extremely very poor value and can be many times the mile cost of a normal award flight.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/infor...help-here.html

Edit:
Looking at your profile I see you are in GB (Great Britain). More of a reason to the points for a hotel and buy the flights

Hello BigEck and welcome to FT.

I can understand that you want to maximize your 100k CC points, but they will only convert to 10k miles, BA is a transfer partner as I see that you are in the UK. However, 100k CC points can certainly be put to good use on hotel stays. Most top of the line hotels in the CC portfolio are around 60-70k points, which means just one hotel night, however, some of their mid-level hotels are around 30k-50k, 2 or 3 hotel nights, and their lower level hotels are around 10k-20k.

I suggest you start looking at any particular destination within train or driving distance to you and see if you can plan a weekend getaway. If you plan accordingly, you can certainly make better use of the points on hotel stay as opposed to air miles.

Good luck.

Welcome to FlyerTalk, BigEck.

The thing you need to understand is that with one big exception (Starwood aka SPG), there's typically a 5:1 to 10:1 ratio between hotel points and airline miles.

In several other hotel programs it's 5:1, but in Club Carlson it's 10:1. So for every 10 Club Carlson points, you only get 1 airline mile.

For this reason, hotel points are generally not worth converting into miles in most cases. The exception might if its a hotel program where the points are about to expire and there's no way to prevent that and you can't find a better use for the points, or if you just need to "top off" an airline account with a few thousand extra miles and the only way you can do that is by converting some hotel points.

But in most other cases, hotel points are only of good value when used for hotel stays (and even then, not at all properties in the program).

And for this reason, you should not be impressed by a hotel point number that "sounds" big. Hotel points could be considered "inflated" numbers, in that you may seem to earn a lot of points quickly, but then you may to use a lot of points for just about anything.

Eyes opened
 

Hi

Many thanks for opening my eyes about this, greatly appreciated.

I reckon I will look for somewhere to stay using the points and simply buy flight tickets.

Seems to be better deals available in the USA but a lot of their Hotels look to be around airports etc.

Need to get my research head on.

Any recommendations stateside at the lower end'ish of points with decent location?

Many thanks again

Alex

There's a forum dedicated to Club Carlson:
I suggest you post a new thread there title something like "USA redemption suggestions?". It's better to discuss this in a place where a lot of Club Carlson members hang out than here where there are probably few of them reading a thread simply titled "help required for Old Newbie".

In my case, I just have focused on accumulating Club Carlson points when the bonuses are big, and paying attention to make sure they don't expire, but I haven't yet ever redeemed them. (But then, I have a lot of points in a lot of hotel programs, so I'm not always looking at Club Carlson redemptions first.)

I personally don't subscribe to the "earn and burn" philosophy. I know from experience over many years that I never know which hotel program I'll need to use for a redemption where I'll decide to go two year from now, so I just accumulate in a lot of programs, keep them all from expiring if possible, and then just use whichever points seem best for a particular trip. I don't try to create trips just to use up points.

I would also suggest, in this case, that you base your choice of "somewhere nice" on factors other than using your points. Consider them a nice bonus if there turns out to be a hote that is convenient for your trip and is part of the chain.

As an example, I've used my IHG points to cover two nights in hotels next to the airport when I have had stupidly early flights. Other than that, I have always been able to find a decent room outside of the major chains, often for a price that is well worth paying just to avoid another hour or two of daily transit time and taxi costs.

This last bit applies more often, I think, outside the US.