Buy Club Carlson Points for 0.47 Cents

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Club Carlson is selling points with a 50% bonus through November 10, 2012 bringing the cost down to 0.47 cents per point. Club Carlson hotels include Radisson, Park Plaza, Park Inn, and Country Inns & Suites.

To purchase points from this non-targeted promotion, start on the promotion’s home page. The promotion page lays out the rules. Every 1,000 points purchased costs $7 and earns a bonus 500 points.

The maximum Club Carlson points you can purchase in a given year are 40k, which would get you 60k total points under this promotion. The cool thing about this promotion is that you can also buy points for other people’s accounts with your own credit card. Club Carlson encourages you to give this gift!

To purchase for another person, you need the person’s full name, Club Carlson number, and email address.

To purchase for yourself, sign into your account, and most of the form will auto-populate:

The side bar mentioned that $7/1k is the pre-tax price. And you may be familiar with US Airways’ Buy Miles promotions that add a 7.5% tax to the purchase price. This purchase is tax free for Americans–Canadians will pay GST/HST.

That means in any increment that you buy the miles, the cost will be .046666 cents per point, a 33% discount on the normal 0.7 cents price. 60k points will cost $280.

Is it a good deal?

This deal should save you money if you don’t have any Club Carlson points, and you want to book a hotel in the near future. I wouldn’t buy points at this price speculatively–that is, without the redemption already in mind–but I would buy them for the following reasons (note that the purchased points take 2-5 days to post.)

Buy Points for a Cash & Points redemption that earns a free night later

Radisson is running a Stay One Night, Get One Night Free promotion right now. I’ve written about the promotion, and I just stayed a night at the O’Hare Radisson with Cash & Points to take advantage of the deal.

Generally the Cash & Points rate gives a really good value for the points used. For instance, this was my price menu at the O’Hare Radisson:

I could either pay $129 or 5k points and $77. That means that those 5k points saved me $52. I got 1.04 cents worth of value for them. That means you can buy them for 0.47 cents per point right now and redeem them for 1.02 cents or more.

Or in dollar terms, if I had no Club Carlson points, I could buy 4k with a 2k bonus (6k total) for $28. That $28 outlay would save $52 on the Radisson O’Hare by using the points for a Cash & Points redemption.

And of course, the whole reason for doing a cheap Radisson Cash & Points redemption right now is to earn the free night certificate for future use at an expensive Radisson in the US, Canada, or the Caribbean.

Buy Points for an Expensive Redemption

Here is the price menu for the Radisson Martinique in Manhattan for a Tuesday night in March:

The nightly rate is $386.10, or you can use 50k points. You can get 51k points by purchasing 34k with a 17k bonus at a cost of $238. That means buying the points would save you nearly $150. And keep in mind that if you are traveling with someone else, you can both buy 50k points to stay at the hotel multiple nights.

Recap

Club Carlson is selling its points for 0.47 cents from now until November 10. You can buy up to 40k with a 20k bonus (60k total) per account.

This 50% bonus–33% off–sale is exploitable, but I wouldn’t buy and hold the points. I would buy them with a specific redemption in mind. On that redemption, you should be able to get around 1 cent or more of value from the points that you buy for 0.47 cents.

Two key ways to redeem them well are Cash & Points awards–especially stacked with the current Stay One Night, Get One Night promotion–or points awards on very expensive properties.

Is anyone going to take advantage of the deal? How much are you saving?