Club Carlson Points Devaluation?
 

So I'm fresh off a couple mattress runs to pick up some cheap CC points and decided to look at their properties in South Africa, where I'll be visiting in a few months. There's been quite a bit of hype in the blogosphere about their current promotion, the Big Night Giveaway, and most seem to advocate that their most expensive properties cost 50,000 points per night - which seems to be confirmed in CC redemption chart.

http://www.clubcarlson.com/offers/di...telBrandCode=&

I had my eye on the Radisson Blu Hotel Waterfront in Cape Town, however this property appears to only be available for 75,000 points. I sampled roughly 20 dates spread over a few months and could only find "premium rooms" which cannot be booked for the standard redemption. I've noticed premium room offerings at other hotels, and have even found a few that only offer premium rooms for certain dates, but they still have standard 50,000 point rooms available - which does not appear to be the case for this property.

Does anyone know of other CC properties that only have premium rooms available? Is this the beginning of a stealth devaluation from CC?

I did a check of the Radisson Blu in Chicago and had a hard time finding rooms available on the weekend up through October.

There is no doubt that the flood of points in the market is going to mean more people redeeming meaning less standard award rooms to go around. I think this is an obvious consequence of printing a lot of the currency

As much as I enjoy the points and the perks of being Concierge, I think Club Carlson has devalued their program quite a lot. Are there anymore any CC members who aren't Gold, as they status match basically anything? Now there's a whole bunch of CC Gold members all expecting upgrades, and when they don't get them as everyone can't be upgraded, they complain here and on similar forums about how bad CC is.

If the market is flooded with a lot of points, it's quite expected that also the number of award rooms booked increases, making it quite difficult to catch standard awards. And then members bash the program here again.

Stop giving out Gold cards for free, and have promos that reward an extraordinary effort (e.g. SPG stay 15 nights and THEN receive more points). There's no value for CC giving out a Gold card and rewarding a 60$ stay with tons of points, as I bet the majority of members use the points for one stay only, don't get upgraded, and then leave CC as the program "is a ripoff, doesn't recognize status bla bla bla".

I think you are over-reacting. Yes there will be a blip - lots of status matched golds, lots of points swirling around. But they have got themselves on the map, and that is what they wanted. Many of the status matched won't stick around so won't be competing for your upgrades. The points will eventually get used up. I remember before their IPO Hyatt were similarly generous and now they have tightened up again but they have built a following. I think Club Carlson are hoping there are more folks like me - I'd never really thought of them before but after the promo last year I actually started using them and have made maybe a dozen or so stays already this year even without this years promo. I'd never have made them without the promo as I'd never have thought of them. So it has served a purpose for the brand, and I would try not to dwell so much on the "country being invaded"!

Agree
 

A lot of people have posted that they will use their points for upcoming travel. Within 6 months or so it will be "back to business" again, only a few will keep using CC for their stays, while others return to their regular program, or move on to the flavor of month.

This is cheap marketing for CC. You guys should get that... if at the end of the day only 30% of those who got the points stay with CC, I think they have succeeded. Sure they will have their own margin - my 30% is just an example.

They have indeed boosted their profile since the program was US-only the last time they had it. This year it was opened to everyone worldwide. Don't you guys think there was a purpose for this?