Awful Radisson Rewards Devaluation – Over 50% Loss Of Value!

Radisson Rewards has overnight completely gutted its rewards programme with absolutely no notice whatsoever. Overnight the programme has switched to revenue-based redemptions slashing 50% if not more off the value of a Radisson Reward Point. Ouch right? Let’s take a look at the Radisson Rewards Devaluation and how it might affect you…

How Much Value Will I Get Now Per Radisson Reward Point?

Redemptions are now revenue based. 1 point gets you a 0.2p discount on your next booking. The previous reward chart that capped the cost of properties depending on what category they are in is no more with no upper limit on the amount of points costs depending on the cash price of the hotel.

Let’s put that into context. A few days ago you could secure a night at The May Fair, A Radisson Collection Hotel for 75,000 points. Right now a night in December would cost you 222,280 points… that’s almost 3 times the cost!

This now makes transfers of American Express membership reward points to Radisson Reward points very poor value if they stay at the current 1:3 rate. 1 membership reward point would get you 0.6p worth of value when used for Radisson Rewards which is very poor.

You’d be better off converting your Membership Reward points into Avios and then Nectar points for 0.8p worth of value at eBay, Sainsburys & more. You can then use the cash you save on your shopping to book a hotel direct with Radisson and earn points for your stay or book with Hotels.com (for 10% of the ex-taxes cost of your booking back.)

On the upside (if you can call it that!) you can now redeem as few as 10 points per booking for a discount. Useful if you have small amounts of Radisson points you’d otherwise not use.

What happens to my existing Radisson Reward Points?

Absolutely nothing. Overnight you have lost 50%+ worth of value on your points. At least with Marriott’s change to revenue-based redemptions members were given advance notice and didn’t have the value of their points wiped out overnight…

What happens to my Radisson Rewards status?

Radisson has completely scrapped their existing status levels and replaced them with 3 new ones.

Being able to obtain ‘Premium’ after just 3 stays or 5 nights makes the status easily achievable by most leisure travellers. The Free Room Upgrade (subject to availability) could be desirable to those who could easily/happily switch stays to a Radisson hotel for their holidays.

The most interesting perk however is the ‘Discount Booster’ which offers up to 20% discount on your bookings for a lower point earning rate. This is a genuine discount, for example, the cheapest room on a December weekend I could book at the Park Plaza County Hall London would cost £292.50. Enabling the discount booster brings this down to £263, a saving of £29.50.

With the Discount Booster option enabled I earn 9 points per $1 as a premium member down from 27. This equates to roughly a difference in earnings of 5,300 points or £10.60 in the above example. It doesn’t make any sense to collect points in this example as by giving up £10.60 worth of points I save almost £30. Always compare the two rates but if it’s always a similar amount like above you may as well leave this option permanently enabled as there is no point getting a smaller discount later when you can have a larger one now!

Free breakfast & upgrades to the best available room are decent benefits at the VIP level but the ‘best available room’ isn’t defined and is open to interpretation by each hotel I’d imagine… On top of this, the jump from Premium to VIP is huge requiring an additional 25 nights or 17 stays. I can’t imagine many members doing that for a free breakfast and the promise of better upgrades.

The earning rate of members is quite low with ‘Club’ members only earning 8 points (1.6p) per $1. It gets a little better as you move up the ladder with ‘Premium’ members earning 27 points (5.4p) per $1 and VIP members earning 36 points (7.2p) per $. In all these examples you are earning under 10% back on each stay with no ‘gamification’ options available which will probably mean you are better off booking with Hotels.com (for 10% of the ex-taxes cost of your booking back.)

You can view all the benefits of each status level here – https://www.radissonhotels.com/en-us/rewards/benefits

What happens to my Status from the Amex Platinum Card?

If you had Gold Status with Radisson Rewards from the Platinum Card you will now have ‘Premium’ status.

Conclusion

It isn’t clear what Radisson Rewards were thinking with this devaluation, not only have they managed to remove any sense of ‘gamification’ from the programme (which removes some of the incentives of staying in a Radisson) but they’ve also managed to annoy their existing loyal customers by halving the value of their points overnight! What do you think about the Radisson Rewards Devaluation?