What are your plans with Radisson Rewards now?
 

I'm curious if the recent development with the Radisson Rewards program is impacting your plans on staying, spending and redeeming Radisson Rewards.

The devaluation, the split of the Radisson Rewards program between Americas and the rest of the world, and now US Bank is discontinuing the Radisson Rewards credit cards. It is not clear if another bank will offer a Radisson Rewards affiliated credit card at this point. Frankly, I am not expecting any bank to.

Radisson has limited footprint in my area, and the number of points needed to redeem for one room at a basic Country Inn has gone way up. Even for future prospective European trips, I feel like expecting to have a smooth experience transferring points into the "rest of the world" program and then be able to redeem points successfully is just a pipe dream at this point. Not to mention many Radisson hotels I've looked at in Europe do not have any availability for points redemption at all.

I don't know what plans Jinjiang (the owner of Radisson hotel group) has in store for Radisson. It doesn't feel like they are actively developing the brand. I am finding it harder and harder to justify keeping one more hotel loyalty program active. I'm not quite giving up yet but I think I'm close.

How about you?

I currently have around 200,000 points and live pretty close to Minneapolis/St. Paul, so Radisson has a decent footprint in the area.

There is even the Carlson School of Business, which was named after the Radisson founder.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlso..._of_Management

I fly out of Minneapolis at least once or twice per year, so I'll probably burn the points slowly, redeeming for airport hotels. If Radisson eventually partners with another bank, and the card has decent benefits, I may reapply.

I have a 300k point stash that was mostly from CC spend/annual 40k on renewal. Honestly with the split in the program, the end of the US cc, their crappy IT (using the free night certs was so painful) and the rather inconsistent experiences I have had at their mid-tier hotels, I am looking to burn my points and dump the program. I'll stick to Hilton and Bonvoy at this point for chain hotels.

I have a couple of million points, so plan on spending them down in the Americas program. I am no longer planning any revenue stays with Radisson, as I just can't bring myself to deal with the two programs.

Found it impossible to move the status from international to Americas so have started with a new program in the USA for me and my team. Whilst the Radisson hotel was fairly close to the site we will be working for the next month other hotels are even closer so without the advantages of the program its just easier to start from scratch with the better options.

I will still keep my radisson international but have abandoned radisson americas.

Wow, and I thought I had a oversized account with about 500k points. :)

Other than a stay here and there at an airport property or a three-day in downtown Trier, Germany (beautiful historic city, by the way), I haven’t really used Radisson much in recent years. My goal is to use up the account balance over the next few years for road trips and airport stays. Already booked three nights at Country Inns where I otherwise would have picked a Hampton Inn or HIX as my go-to chain. That’s only 90k points, so I have more work to do :)

I was Club Carlson Concierge for around 5 years but after they stopped their excellent weekend extend deals I no longer saw a reason to stay and so slipped down the levels. I’m currently on the lowest rank: Club

I don’t stay at Radisson Group hôtels much at all now but I saw in January that I had 45,221 points and I’m burning 45,000 of them on a three night ‘cash and points’ stay at Amsterdam West Park Inn this Bank Holiday weekend.

I have no loyalty left for Radisson Group; should I stay with them in the future it will be based solely on price and location rather than a desire to build status up again in their programme which is worthless now.

I tend to be a hoarder when it comes to points and miles. Unfortunately, they keep getting devalued and I have yet to learn my lesson. Ugh!

I never had loyalty for Radisson, but I collected their points from occasional stay due to long-forgotten promos and their credit card. Going forward (once I had used up my points), I think any Radisson stays will likely be booked via hotels.com and earn credits in their loyalty program.

I keep learning (and forgetting) that lesson again and again :)

I should have booked a lot more Radisson awards when they had the BOGO offer for credit card holders.

Down to about 15k points. I will be looking for one final redemption (possibly cash and points), then I'm out.

I'm staying, there is no other chain that can match Radisson's footprint around my travel pattern. I can either be Platinum with Radisson or, at best, (equivalent to) Silver in another program.

Radisson has plenty of nice hotels in areas I travel to and some of them are great with elite recognition. At the same time, this is very inconsistent so there definitely are locations where I no longer bother with loyalty and just go shop around.

I'm at about 1.5 mio points and had planned to use a bunch on a summer vacation to Europe back in 2020 but then the pandemic hit. Well of course that plan was put on ice but still looking at moving a good chunk by summer of next year. Europe is really the only option for me to move any decent amount of points since their footprint in NYC dwindled back down to 2 crappy properties (like to use points for weekends in the city) and I haven't found any place else in the US worth staying at on vacation. I travel in Europe for business a couple of times a year so I usually have a stay or two at Radisson properties but definitely not going out of my way to earn points any longer.

I stayed at the mid-town property last year and yeah it was crappy. It had the worst internet access I have experienced the last 10 years easily. Folks were at the front desk complaining about it all the time. Thankfully I was there on work so not terribly impacted. I burned up a couple of e-certs there (cannot use them overseas). The couple of nights I spent at a Marriott on free certs was so much better.

The lack of a decent property in NYC for Radisson is beyond my comprehension. Logic would seem to dictate that Radisson should have decent Radisson or Radisson Blu properties in most of the larger US cities like NYC, LA, Chicago, etc., etc. Reality is their NYC footprint has always left a lot to be desired. They had just the so so Martinique for the longest time and then that hotel left and got a reno to join the Hilton Curio brand. They then added an indepedent hotel called the Cassa that actually wasn't bad but that only lasted a year or so. Then they kept announcing a new Radisson Times Square that was delayed and once it opened the pandemic hit and it was deflagged and I think it is now a DoubleTree. In the past there was rumors of a Radisson Red and even an Art'otel in the works but who knows if those still even on the table.

Again...just incomprehensible that in a city like NYC there is no flagship property for their brand....and even more incomprehensible is charging 70k for an award room at the Midtown property you commented on.

I stayed at their Fifth Avenue property a few times last year, and each stay resulted in a call to Radisson Customer Service. The property does not honor any of the Radisson Rewards Elite benefits. When pressed, the hotel reinterprets the benefits. For example, they allow an early check-in up to an hour for a $50 fee. Why I kept going back is beyond me.