Another kick in the pants! Just a few weeks after Club Carlson announced the removal of their most popular award feature (the “Bonus Award night”), they’re back with another kick in the pants.
And of course, by “announced”, I mean, “tried to sneak it into the bottom of the fine print of terms and conditions”.
300 Club Carlson hotels changing category
I first read about this on Miles with Blighty, but Club Carlson just announced that over 300 hotels are changing category, effective June 1.
There are 329 hotels changing category. 212 are going up, and only 117 are going down. There are a few hotels going up 2 categories (mostly from 5 to the new Category 7, costing 70,000 points / night). At least unlike when IHG just announced their category “changes” a few weeks ago, there are some that are going down 2 categories as well. Unfortunately, most of these are hotels in India going from Category 3 to Category 1 :-(.
The official list is posted at Club Carlson’s site, but here is a sortable table so you can more easily see the changes.
I will work on a map and hope to have that up later in the day or tomorrow
What to do
Well, these changes go into effect on June 1, which is the same date that the removal of the Bonus Award Night happens. So if you weren’t ALREADY booking all your Club Carlson stays before then to take advantage of the B1G1F offer, here’s a definite reason to do it now!
We just booked 2 nights at the Radisson Blu Rome for our upcoming trip to Europe, at 44,000 points for 2 nights. Now that same hotel would cost 100,000 points (due to going up from Category 5 to 6 and the removal of the Bonus Award Night).
What about you? What are you booking?
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
where are the costa rica properties? does that mean no change?
If it’s not in this list, then it’s not changing categories!
Thanks for the post, very helpful. (and between the spouse & I, we have about 250K points to deploy by June 1st) Yet have a question about the timing…. For those properties coming down a category or two, effective, June 1st, would it make sense to hold off making the reservations until June 1st — as that’s the last day to make the Bonus Award Night reservations? Does that make sense to you? Or am I missing something?
You’ll have to run the numbers based on your situation. If a hotel is currently at 38K / night, you can get 2 nights for 38K, or 19K a night. If it’s going down to less than that, then of course it makes sense. It may also make sense if you’re wanting to book an odd number of nights.
I’d imagine in 99% of the cases it would be better to book before the changes.
Thanks for the reply, yet perhaps I can explain better, by example . I’m talking about a double positive situation. Take for example the Orlando Park Inn, currently a cat 2 at 15k per night. On June 1st, it goes down to a cat 1 at 9k per night. If I read the terms of the expiration of the bonus point reservations is also June 1st (inclusive — but that’s what I want to be sure of). If I’m right, I can make the reservations for hotels at the new rates effective June 1st, and in this case just 9k — AND still get the second night free. (This is more than just 1% of cases — it would apply to any property where the rates goes down effective June 1st — and on the last day of the 2/1 bonus points reservation system)
Interesting – seems strange that one would be June 1st inclusive and one would not. You might also enjoy the followup post I wrote based off of our conversation.
Hmmmmm…. I believe I deserve a credit for being the only poster anywhere in the blogosphere who read the fine print and anticipated exactly what happened….. (alas, you never did comprehend what I was spelling out) And today we have it: the old 2/1 reservation capability persisted into June 1st, even as the new rates (in most places) have been put into place. (that orlando Radisson Park Inn being a bizarre example to the contrary)
It’s true! You were the genius of the day!!!! 😀