By now, you’ve probably heard about the 2 upcoming devaluations to awards with Club Carlson hotels.

Removal of the Bonus Award night

This was the big killer – one of the best awards in all of travel hacking – each time you stayed at a Club Carlson hotel, you got the last night free.

So if you made only 2 night reservations, it was essentially doubling your Club Carlson points.  It is going away as of June 1st, so you have less than a month to book any 2 night awards

Club Carlson hotel category changes

A few days later, Club Carlson announced that over 300 of their hotels were changing categories (most of them going up).  I made a sortable table of the changes, and also a map of the Club Carlson hotel category changes

Click to go to the full map

So what now?

The obvious answer is to book, book, and drain your Club Carlson point balance.  Remember, miles and points are a deflationary currency and the proper strategy is “earn em and burn em“.  But I got a comment on a post recently which made me wonder

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?

So I thought I’d run the numbers.  Let’s look at the table again

There are actually a small number of hotels that are going down 2 categories.  Unfortunately, most of those are not in any places that you actually want to stay!! 🙂

• There are 6 hotels going from Category 3 (28,000 points a night) to Category 1 (9,000 points / night).  So it costs 28,000 points for a 2 night stay now, and after June 1st, it will cost 18,000 points (9,000 * 2)
• 6 hotels go from Category 4 (38,000 points / night) to Category 2 (15,000 points / night).  Again, it will make sense to wait if you want to book any of those hotels

For a couple of other moves, the difference is higher, but somewhat close, so it could make sense to wait, depending on your individual travel plans, especially if you want to / need to travel for more than 2 days!

• 2 hotels go from Category 5 to Category 3, an increase from 45,000 to 56,000 points for a 2 night stay
• 16 hotels go from Category 2 to Category 1, an increase from 15,000 to 18,000 points for a 2 night stay
• 39 hotels go from Category 3 to Category 2, an increase from 28,000 to 30,000 points for a 2 night stay

The other hotels that are going down in category will mean increases of at least 15,000 points for a 2 night stay, so in those cases it probably makes sense to book now.

I realize that this advice probably won’t affect most people, but it does bear mentioning if any of your upcoming stays include any of the Club Carlson hotels that are going down in categories.

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