farwest101

Agreed. Zero aspirational properties. One of the bloggers gushed about a stay in NYC and what a good deal it was with the second night "free" - except the closet leaked water all over his wife's clothes. What a dump...

Domestically, Carlson is a wasteland. It has better (mid tier) properties in Europe. But I'm not interested in either. Yet I still have several cards, mostly in case relatives need some place to stay (lol). Cheap way to keep them out of the house and send the message that the dump we are putting them up in reflects our happiness to see them.

farwest101

On some cards that only offer 1x, you will likely be better off simply using 2% cards. But there are big sweet spots if you are aware of them, or have access to sufficiently low cost MS.

You can MS SPG and Hyatt at 0.5c in scale and get ~2c value quite easily. You can MS HH at 0.2c and get over 1c if you have Diamond. Effectively 75-80% discount over paid rates. It's rare if you can reliably find decent hotels at the time and place you are traveling at anywhere near that sort of discount on Priceline etc.

Plus if you can MS on HH and earn Diamond, or have enough award stays on SPG, you can get upgrades that you'd never get on a paid rate (or at least without huge additional expense).

littlewinglet

I don't know how domestic Club Carlson properties are, but I enjoyed my stays in several hotels in Europe, and Radisson Blu Sydney is excellent.

On the subject of "aspirational"....what exactly do you aspire to that you can't get a Radisson Blu? The discussion here is which card is best to MS with and I can manufacture top-tier Radisson nights for about $30-50 per night. What other program do you suggest as a better one?

I believe that's the subject of this discussion, not which hotel chain has nicer properties. If I could do easy MS for Hyatt nights of course I'd stay in Park Hyatt whenever I could.

farwest101

Well, what's the point of having a hotel card if the properties you can stay in are mostly low end if you don't like low end? I prefer Conrad's, Park Hyatt's, St. Regis, Ritz Carlton - if my goal were just a room over my head at low cost, I'd probably just do Priceline roulette.


But if Radisson Blu is your cup o' tea, more power to you, as you're getting a great deal with the second night free benefit.

littlewinglet

I have no problem with Radisson Blu so far, I think they're very nice for the most part, and I don't feel like it's just "a roof over my head". Plus I travel for the destination anyway and think sitting in the hotel or paying for a 5-star one is a waste of time/money.

How are you going to MS for a Conrad or St Regis? The time and fees cost of MSing for those properties would be way more than it's worth. Sometimes it'll be cheaper to just pay cash.

farwest101

I'd never dream of allowing my MS costs to be more than a small fraction of the equivalent paid rate. If I can't ensure that, I'm not MSing on that program.

littlewinglet

That's nice in theory, but how do you personally do MS and what's your card of choice?

With all the main MS pathways( GC->MO, GC->Redbirt, credit straight to Redbird, and AMEX GC for cashback+points -> unload to MO/redbird) the accumulation is way too slow unless you get lucky with some local low-fee MS opportunities or have multiple blue/red-birds available. Hyatt is best MSed with the UR cards.

rtraveler

Thanks, now I remember Hyatt was similar to Marriott cc free night where it was limited to a certain category. I think Marriot was Cat 5, that's why I haven't gotten the Marriott/Hyatt. For Hilton, if you have to spend $10k/yr and pay an annual fee, that really makes the free night costly.

sosamo

I think if I am going to spend about $250-300 Msing for 80-90k of Hilton points (1 free night at a Cat 10), then I will for sure use it toward a Conrad, WA, etc that cost $800-1000 a night a or so. So about a 60-75% discount.

Same with Hyatt...$250-300 MS cost, for a Grand/Park Hyatt that normally cost $800+ per night.

littlewinglet

Would you have paid $800 or $1000 per room anywhere? And what does $300 cash get you in those same locations?

thewhitezone

$300 cash gets you something not as high-end as a room at the Conrad or Waldorf. I think the point is that you can either MS your way to a high-end accommodation for $300/nt or you can lay out $300/nt to stay is sub-high-end accommodations. YMMV on whether it's worth it

littlewinglet

Well I agree, but reason I ask is, with flight awards, there's a clear massive leap in quality from coach to biz/first, so even if you never would have paid cash for that, the benefit is clear.

How much better is Conrad / Waldorf then Aloft really? Once you get a quality bed, nice shower and a reasonably sized room, what else does a top of the line hotel have that justifies the 2x or 3x spending? I've read many reviews of Westins, St Regises, etc.. that people though were subpar and overpriced, and many great reviews of mid-tier hotels in the same city. I came to the conclusion with the exception of maybe aspirational resorts, it's just not worth the MS effort to shoot for those types of hotels.

Btw, Waldorf Astoria in NYC is an overpriced pile of crap. My sister stayed there once. It's a typical example of all glitz and no substance of many 5-star hotels. I've stayed in a quite a few myself where plumbing fixtures and water pressure was subpar, but they made sure to charge me $5 per sock for laundry to keep up appearances of a high-end hotel.

iflyjetz

You need to consider the Best Western Rewards MasterCard. You'll find that the Best Western international properties are same/better than Club Carlson. I think you'll find Best Western Premier properties to be better than the average Radisson Blu, both domestically and internationally.

As far as the rest of the discussion, I do a lot of Cash and Points with both Hyatt and SPG so MSing those cards makes sense to me. I get 2-3 cents per point on my points. And since I only MS with redbird, there's no cost to me for MSing.

littlewinglet

I have stayed at some BW abroad and have found them to be mostly mediocre. Perfectly acceptable but nowhere near the Radisson Blu quality.
But I'd take it if I could MS points quickly, since I don't care about useless bells and whistles of overpriced hotels, its just a place to sleep.

However, I don't see their credit card info anywhere. Their website seems to suggest it's only for Canadians, and has pathetic earning rate and a crappy 20k bonus. How is that better than Club Carlson for MS? I earn a free night at top-tier Radisson for 5k spend with every 2nd night free.....don't see anything similar for BW.

rtraveler

I agree. What other hotel can you get a top category hotel with $5k of MS'ing which is about $40 in fees for me.