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On June 1, the Club Carlson Visa is dropping its last night free award stay benefit and a number of properties are changing price. FrequentMiler suggested Top 7 ways to milk the Club Carlson card before and after June 1. Points With a Crew compiled a sortable table and map of the price changes.
I started to plan out my next year of probable bookings and then noticed the Club Carlson booking calendar stretch on and on. 3 years it spools out.
How far they go is hotel-specific. 2016 is reliably available wherever I search. I have Mother’s Day 2016 booked at Radisson Blu Mall of America.
From 2017 on, it is slim pickings. Stretching out to May 2018 I found 2 Park Inn’s in London with points rates.
Note that a number of their properties, especially around peak times, have expansive cancellation policies. I have encountered 14 days for Phuket and 30 days for Omaha next Berkshire Hathaway Annual Meeting.
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In my experience most Park Inn hotels have point rate loaded for 2017 and 2018.
[…] Club Carlson booking calendar is open 3 years. Farther out than 1 year there are relatively few hotels with points rates loaded, unfortunately it […]
Is there a list of hotels that are accepting reservations using points in 2017 and 2018? I see many hotels accepting reservations in 2017 using cash but not points. I tried to get some of them to open up inventory but no luck.
@ketan – sorry, no list and I don’t know of a shortcut to search other than city by city.
Also, where can I find a complete list of the hotels and their “cost”. I can’t seem to find it anywhere.
@Hilary – I do not believe there is a convenient list of all the hotels and their award cost. Travel is Free has a great Map of Club Carlson Hotels that will help, then you can verify at the Club Carlson site.
Each booking has its own cancellation terms. As long as you cancel before the deadline you get your points back. The assumption is that if you try to change dates after June 1 that you will forfeit the free night.
If you book so far in advance…what happens if you have to cancel? You just lose the free last night?
[…] Did You Know the Club Carlson Booking Calendar is Open 3 Years?- Very useful information as the upcoming devaluation and removal of Bonus Award Nights is getting closer. […]
RTC – I feel like there’s a story behind the hotel your wife wanted to leave after one night? 🙂
That only ever happens to us when (me) the room is filthy, which I’d recognize right away rather than stay a night; or (my husband) when the air conditioning unit is very loud.
Actually, practically speaking, I wonder how that works when you want to leave a hotel early.
@Jamie – Radisson Toronto Harbourfront two years ago, massive construction outside, racous wedding party inside along with drunks from the Blue Jays-Tigers game, shouting in the halls all night.
In that case Club Carlson was on the phone while I was with hotel management, Club Carlson already paid the points and we applied to the stay, with nothing they could refund. Only option is if the hotel agrees to refund everything for the stay.
RTC – Well, I think that’s a reason for leaving that everyone could agree on. 🙁
Burned all our Club Carlson points as follows tonight:
4 nights @ the Warwick, Philly in June
10 nights @ Radisson, Grenada over Thanksgiving 2015
8 nights over President’s week 2016 @ Radisson, Aruba
Spent 18 night @ Radisson, Aruba in the last 6 months and really like the resort. Taking a chance w/ this booking because the front desk told me that if sold to Hilton, they would honor reservation through 2015.
@DavidNJ – good to hear on Aruba. I almost tried the St Martin one but it was really remote for my island hopping ways, and two weeks later it was sold and gone from the system, don’t know what they did about honoring existing reservations with that one, went to a French company.
Not sure if this is your first time Grenada, I spent a night at Grenada last year. Nice spot, lots of British Airways tourists (pasty and middle-age). Grenada does of a lot of things ok and nothing spectacular and so was the hotel, see my recap.
“Pasty & middle aged”, British tourists might crap this 62 year old Yanks style …… Blawhahaha!
dm @run_emcd – I have an idea
@Eric – or something broken to be exploited, I will run some tests.
Cool, thanks – just wanted to make sure they weren’t likely to come back after the devaluation date and take one of the nights away. Maybe it was because it was an international hotel…
When you say “does not work” can you tell me what you mean? I did it a couple hours ago for a hotel for two stays in October. I’m wondering if it will get canceled on me or if I’ll have a problem when I check in.
@Eric – in my other experience and other reports the system did not give the 2nd night free when doing the second booking at same hotel when the nights were consecutive or trying to do multiple rooms at same hotel for same nights. Maybe something changed or you got lucky. If you have the reservations confirmed and the points deducted from your account, I think you should be good to go. Hotels just see points deducted for 2 night stay from an experience I had talking with them over a hotel my wife wanted to leave after first night.
What happens if you book back-to-back two night reward stays? Do they later come back and cancel one or is that possible to do?
@Eric – does not work, Travel is Free has a piece with some potential solutions, How to Book Club Carlson’s Free Bonus Award Nights Back to Back! If you have both the personal and business cards, each is tied to a different Club Carlson account so can book back to back alternating accounts.