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I am the reader.

There are no more award nights. I came across this while searching for the new points table. During the reservation it is now displayed that you can redeem points on the selected rate. By the way, not all hotels and not all rates offer them! Then you can reduce the rate with points as with cash to the very poor conversion value mentioned. If an overnight stay costs EUR 200, you now need 100,000 points. An unbelievable scoring. Radisson is dead to me.

christianj

Ok this really is not working out as good now that I have figured out how to get points redemption options to come up. Just a quick comparison on a room I was looking at booking in Frankfurt early December before a morning flight:

Radisson Blu Frankfurt - Rate around Euro 119 and last week at the fixed redemption it was 38k....today it is 41351 points
Park Inn FRA - Rate around Euro 92 and last week at the fixed redemption it was 30k.....today it is31969 points

So even very low room rates are at a higher redemption thus meaning that when the rates are high it will be a real mess. Dynamic award pricing is really putting the screws on everyone since one program started with this crap and now all are following.

Very frustrated by this! I moved almost all of my points over to the Worldwide program (after having them in the US program since I am US based even though most stays in Europe) since I saw no real value i the points turning into Choice points. Now I have to rethink everything!

kauppias

I just moved mine to americas as I see no reason to stay at radissons for these benefits not sure choice will be any better sure.... I do wonder what kind of transfer they will do...

The program is a dead horse for me on both sides of the pond. A local hotel used to cost 45k now it will be 100k and its a basic city hotel nothing fancy

christianj

We are kind of between a rock and a hard place at this point! The main problems I have with Choice are:
1. 30 day award booking window which makes redemptions for planned vacations virtually impossible. It's good for last minute bookings but if I am booking an award ticket on an airline to Europe I need to know where I'm staying and I just can't chance it 30 days out. Sure you can book a room in another program and then if Choice is available 30 days out you book it but that is just a pain in the butt.
2. Lack of nice high-end properties in general.

36902BRF

I am going to take my lumps and burn up the 350k I have in Europe next March at the current rates. It is actually not a major difference given the poor value I was seeing before the devaluation. I see no reason to keep holding these points and I don't redeem much in the US and when I do e.g., going to my son's college area, there aren't really any good Radisson properties nearby.

phuze

Looks like they've got the exchange rate wrong for UAE properties seeing 180000 points turning into 91 AED (24.77 USD). Embarassing.

satori

The Radisson website is making mistakes for hotels in several countries not on EUR when redeeming points.
50,000 points are worth 0.15 EUR in Prague or 14 cents USD. Sweden also screwed up with super low value for points with 50,000 points worth 0.74 EUR.

Radisson Waterfront Stockholm

Value for 50,000 points = 8.09 SEK = 0.74 EUR.

Valgamaa

I does, but not so great. The lounge is a narrow balcony with booths on one side and views over the restaurant on the other. Drinks on offer are Karhu, hot drinks and a couple of wines. There are nuts etc. too. Fine as a place to meet others before going out, which I guess is what it is intended for.

soy

I am now the owner of a hell of a lot more (future) Choice points than yesterday. At least the transfer tool still works, though I could see them shutting that off soon

christianj

What happens when Choice sets the conversion rate at some crappy value? That's why I said we are stuck between a rock and a hard place since there are still so many unknowns of having a large Radisson US balance.

soy

True, I was only after moving points out of the US program, but 0.2c value is brutal.
Maybe I am deluded but I hold out hope that the Choice points will end up at a slightly better valuation.

robbo135

Annyone manage to redeem points using the new program, when I try and redeem online or on the app, I get an error message : The account is restricted

Thanks

frmnj

Would someone be kind enough to post the EMEA to US transfer link? When I go through the US to EMEA transfer link it says not eligible since I have zero points in US account

Happy

Has anyone moved all their points back to America? This avenue may close anytime soon.
I cannot believe with procrastination, I waited till the Choice news to consider moving pts to EMEA, then finally did it no more than 2 months ago. Now this!
Luckily I keep a very small balance in the America program, not really knowing why at the time. Now seeing frmnj is not able to move his points back to America due to 0 balance there, I almost feel lucky that I may still be able to, tomorrow morning.
Choice is not all bad apart from the 30 days restriction but since they dont have "Choice" properties anyway, punt intended, for a run of the mill, just a clean place to spend a night, it could be useful for that purpose.

GUWonder

Choice no longer has a general 30 day award booking window, as that 30 day thing is history. Choice expanded the award booking window for all members to the same window which they had previously retained only for their upper tier members; and so now it’s possible for all Choice members to book even 2-3 months out from desired stay dates.

Choice has Preferred Hotels & Resorts as a redemption option — if able to find someone competent at the company to book such award nights using Choice points — and some of those properties are at least as high-end as the highest-end Radissons in the world.