You know what they say about Lay’s Potato Chips – you can’t eat just one. Booking Club Carlson nights is pretty much the exact same way for me. 🙂 What do I mean by that?
Club Carlson has one of the most unique hotel credit card perks around – the ability to get the last night free on award stays of two nights or more. This makes the value of Club Carlson points to have great potential since you can essentially get two nights for one night’s worth of points!
This means, if you are redeeming 44,000 points for a stay at a category 5 for one night, you can stay one more night for free (if you have a Club Carlson credit card). If you stay for four nights in a hotel, you will only owe the points for three nights. This is an incredible value – one that is increased significantly when you stay at hotels for only two nights a time. If you were visiting a city with more than one Club Carlson hotel, you could stay two nights at one (for one night’s worth of points), move to another for another two nights (for one night’s worth of points), and then even move back to the original hotel for two nights (for one night’s worth of points). All in all, you would have stayed six nights and only used points for three of them!
How does this affect my bookings? Well, I have a trip upcoming that I am trying to find the best points to use, but the problem is it is only a single night stay. A Club Carlson hotel is the most convenient hotel, but I refuse to spend 44,000 points for a one-night stay! 🙂 See, Club Carlson has spoiled so that I do not think of a Category 5 as being 44,000 points per night – I look at it only costing 22,000 points per night. This is because all of my Club Carlson hotel stays are for two nights. Once I have stayed in one of their hotels for two nights, I will be off to another hotel!
So, like Lay’s, the problem with Club Carlson is that I can’t book just one (night) – but, at least with Club Carlson, I can stop at two!
Does that Club Carlson perk affect your award stays or am I the only one that books like that? 🙂
Related:
Agreed! It hit’s me like Pringles! 😛
That is actually closer to my liking as well 🙂
Don’t overlook the fact that the card earns 5 points per dollar spent. While the way to maximize the points are to only do 2 night stays, for a lot of us the 1 night stays far outnumber the 2 night stays.
When I look at an upcoming stay, I try to find the cheapest option whether it is points or cash. Since CC points are easy to accumlate, often the least expensive option is a Carlson property.
I booked two rooms for wife and two kids at two different Paris Radisson Blu locations for two nights each stay. Incredible value for the four of us with two Club Carlson cards.
can you and a spouse each book 2 nights and get 4 nights for the price of two in the same hotel?
Yes, because they are separate accounts. On a side note, it is possible to transfer points between spouses with nothing but an email message. No fees and the transfer happens in two days.