Earlier in April it was announced that Radisson Rewards would be splitting into two programs (Radisson Rewards & Radisson Rewards America). Apparently this was done because of requirements by the U.S. government over data concerns as Radisson is a a Chinese owned chain. This doesn’t make a lot of sense as Americans can still join the regular Radisson Rewards program and can transfer points between the programs at a 1:1 rate.
As part of this change Radisson Rewards is also making a number of negative changes:
- New award chart with 5 tiers instead of the previous 7 tiers.
- 62% of properties will increase in price (40% will go up 1,000 – 2,000 points and remaining 22% will go up by more than 2,000 points)
- 30% of properties will decrease in price
- 8% of properties will be priced the same
- Introduction of RewardSaver awards, these will cost 30% less than a standard award night and availability is based on hotel occupancy (valid starting June 2021 for Americas program and 2022 for worldwide program)
- It will become more difficult to earn elite status as stays in the Americas will only credit towards the Americas program and stays worldwide will credit to the worldwide program, there will be no reduction in the requirements for earning elite status
You can tell that most of the properties decreasing in price won’t be decreasing by much as they didn’t provide the same % breakdown that they did with the properties increasing in price. I’m still not convinced why these programs needed to split in the first place as the explanation given doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Hat tip to VFTW
I will cancel our US bank Radisson credit card
Radisson is my primary hotel points card. They still give 40,000 pts just for paying the annual fee. Shame about the devaluation. Hard to find any 9,000 pt hotels now.
I am glad that Radisson is a hotel program that I rarely use. Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, IHG, and then Wyndham is my usage.
Cash back cards looking pretty good these days. Bank of America Premium Rewards 2.63% CB on everything, 3.5% CB on travel and dining (these are at platinum reward tier). Keep things simple.
Especially if Platinum status thus 5.25% in several categories across BOA cards.
So I actually pulled all the changes into excel, ran a little code to convert old categories to points, and calculated the overall price change and it’s actually not really bad. Specifically, the total average of all properties before this change was 31,789 points/night. After the change, and excluding the three new properties, those same hotels cost an average of 31,936 points/night, an increase of less than half a percent.
That said, I think the numbers obfuscate the truth here a bit: all the nice properties with cool stuff to do around them increased in price. Every property I would stay at went up in cost, and I imagine that holds for most of us as well. A lot of the lowering of costs were some sharp drops for hotels that were mispriced high previously.
Still, some travelers that use a lot of 15,000 point nights in small towns in the middle of nowhere might actually see increased value from the program.
I think it really is a YMMV situation. Radisson is probably the 4th or 5th program I look at, and mainly comes into play for locations with poor coverage from the other chains. When I looked at the Radisson locations I would potentially be interested in, there were a few that increased 1-5K, and multiple that dropped 10-15K. Overall I think its a net small gain for me, in terms of points. I’ll still look first to the other programs though, and the rest of the changes (one chain, two programs) annoy me a lot more.
Could not have said it better myself!
Radisson, IHG, Marriott and Hyatt have all devalued their programs this year already. Now waiting for Hilton’s devaluation…
Yea, im done with transferring points and hunting for the deals. Im going cashback only since this will get worse in the long run and it doesn’t feel like your saving much
I actually know people who basically only accumulate points through work travel and try to save up for a big aspirational trip. This devaluation hurts that type of loyal traveler the most; that trip they’re saving for becomes a constantly moving target. They think they know how many points they’ll need, but when they go to book, they discover they need even more points. They’re not paying attention to blogs and following the latest public-relations spin about program “enhancements.”
thanks for passing along the news, such as it is. Once the detailed devaluation (mostly) lists come out, we’ll have time to decide if we really want to lock in stays at the few remaining nice places, before the point rates sky-rocket (sic).Alas, see the tentative list links somebody posted near the end of VFTW’s post… Sure, nice to see there will be a few more “category 1” properties — except category 1 now will require 15k points (not 9k)…. Sadly, already seeing now all-too-standard Raddyshack style misleading claims…. a lot of hotels in the new “simplified” listings going ostensibly “down” a category, but UP big time in point requirements…. like that falling apart once delightful “oceanfront” Raddyshack in Melbourne FL…. going down a category, but up in point requirements from 44k to 60k (and tack on the resort fee for nothing)
(This is the same place that gets away with selectively reproducing dated glowing reviews from TripAdvisor on the Radisson reservation site, while shamelessly blocking out ALL the recent blistering bad reviews actually posted on TripAdvisor…. How do they get away with that? so par for the course with Raddyshack)
and so it goes.
This is absolutely horrible! My challenge is that I’ve been hoarding Radisson points.
Yep, me too. I racked up almost a million points many years ago when they had that stay one night, get 50k promotion. Just happened to be traveling for work at the time and signed up for a bunch of Radisson accounts and raked in the points. But, like you, I never use them.
FUCK YOU Radisson & IHG!!!
Glad i never got into radisson awards althou i used to stay often in radissons in europe.