30% Discount At Club Carlson Hotels This Summer and 2,000 Bonus Points
Club Carlson—the family of hotels that includes Radisson, Radisson Blu, Park Inn by Radisson, Country Inns and Suites and Park Plaza—just keeps the promos going. After May's 138,000 collective Big Night Giveaways, the chain emailed members of Club Carlson about a 30% discount on bookings made between now and June 12 for stays from June 22-September 1 on select dates and various properties. There's also a 2,000-point sign-up and first-stay bonus going on now through December 31, 2012.
30% Off This Summer
The email I got said:
"Save 30% on your stay when you book select hotels at countryinns.com, radisson.com, parkinn.com or parkplaza.com by June 12, 2012, and stay during specific dates between June 22 and September 1, 2012.
Check out the participating hotels in your favorite locations or view a complete list of the select Country Inns & Suites By CarlsonSM, Radisson®, Park Inn by Radisson or Park Plaza® hotels."
The list of participating properties is very long, so rather than paste them all here, you can find them at the links in the email above.
The promo is for new reservations made between May 30 and June 12 (not existing reservations), excludes taxes and other incidental charges, is only good for standard rooms (so no suites!), and cannot be combined with any other package, promotion, group or convention rate.
What's odd is that the 30% discount seems to be good at select properties for about one night each, or one night here and there throughout the summer, so good luck getting it for multi-day stays. As you'll see below, however, I still managed to find 30%-off discounts on non-advertised dates, so I think there's more savings here than meets the eye.
I looked at the Radisson landing page, and it says bookings must be made by May 30, but I was just able to get a 30% discount at the Radisson Vancouver Airport on an available date, so it looks like you can still get the discount anyway.
But for the rest, at least the deadline is June 12, so that gives you some time to get your plans in order. You can find out the individual properties and the dates they're available in the links to the various chains above—most are just a night here or there, which is a bit mystifying, but hey, if you need a hotel at O'Hare for a night in August, you could be in luck.
I just did a couple sample bookings to see how it worked. I searched the list of Country Inns and did a booking at the Country Inn at Chicago O'Hare Northwest on August 3 (the one night it's available at the discount rate) and sure enough, it came out to about $62 instead of the normal $89.
Just to double check, though, I entered a two-night stay at the same property the following week, and the average room rate was $69, which the site told me was also 30% off normal, so I'm not sure exactly how this will all work going forward.
Remember that regular Club Carlson members earn 1,000 bonus Gold Points on bookings made online. But to really rake in the points and get 2,000 Club Carlson Gold Points per booking instead, you can ask Club Carlson to status match you based on your elite standing with another program to their Gold Status level, which gives:
- Complimentary room upgrades as available
- 50% point bonus on every eligible stay
- 2,000 point online booking bonus at clubcarlson.com or any Carlson Rezidor hotel website
- Early check-ins and late checkouts as available upon request
- Roll Over Nights (unused elite-qualifying nights count again next year toward elite status)
- 72-hour room availability guarantee at participating hotels
- Elite Customer Service Line
All you need to do is email them here and include a screen shot of your current hotel elite status, your Carlson Gold Points number and request a status match. That $62 booking I made at the Country Inn at O'Hare would then be worth 2,093 points, earning me almost 34 points per dollar I spend. I wish I could get that ratio at all the chains!
And if you haven't signed up for Club Carlson yet (though why wouldn't you with those tantalizing Big Night Giveaways?), then at least you can still earn 2,000 points for signing up here and completing a stay within 90 days anytime from now through December 31, 2012. Though this isn't quite as lucrative as the recent E-Rewards 4,500-point sign-up bonus, at least it's still some free points and doesn't require too much effort on your part--just a stay within 90 days of signing up.
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