Weekend Update: 4,500 Free Club Carlson Points, Free Accor Platinum Status, & The Importance Of Random Free Points / Miles

4,500 Club Carlson Points

Frugal Travel Guy points outs that you can get 4,500 free Club Carlson points by signing up for their loyalty program.

Link To Sign Up For Offer

Since this isn’t Marriott, Starwood, Hilton, Priority Club, or Hilton, many of you are probably wondering what is the point of singing up for this loyalty program?

As I always say, free points are free points!

The reason I say this is because you never know when you will need random hotel points!

Case and point, I was making a hotel reservation for my trek up to the Gorge in Washington State over Labor Day, which just happens to be in the absolute middle of nowhere.

I went down the list of hotels for Starwood, Marriott, Priority Club, etc and there was either no vacancy or there were no properties in the vicinity.

Therefore I ended up booking a Super 8 for $150 a night since that was the best option that wasn’t sold out within a 50 mile radius on the venue. (Fair warning: You can expect a full trip report detailing all the “amenities” during my stay at Super 8 which hopefully will not include bed bugs!)

It is times like this that I really wish I would have signed up for Wyndham Rewards (the loyalty program for Super 8 ) years ago and accumulated all the easy free points like I do with Priority Club.

Had I done that, I could have used those free points for a few free nights at the Super 8 instead of spending $150 a night!

The purpose of my little story is that you never know when you will need random points, so it is better to have the points (especially since they are free), then pay out-of-pocket to stay at a hotel that is clearly not worth $150 a night!

Offer expires May 30, 2012.

50,000 Point Big Night Promotion Round 2?

Also Mommy Points points out that the Club Carlson 50,000 point Big Night Giveaway might be back again this year.

Last year, as part of their grand opening of the Radisson Blu in Chicago, Club Carlson gave away 50,000 Club Carlson points just for making a one night stay at any Club Carlson property.

Given that you can start redeeming free nights with Club Carlson at only 9,000 points, hopefully they will bring this 50,000 point promotion back because it really is an awesome deal!

Completely unrelated to the 50,000 point offer, the non-profit Board that I am on is having our annual Gala at the Radisson Blu next weekend, so I am excited to check the property out and share my insights on the hotel. From what I’ve heard, even though Radisson is typically not associated with luxury, these Radisson Blu properties are suppose to be really nice hotels.

Be on the look out for my review sometime in the next few weeks, where I will try extremely hard from making any Arrested Development, “Blu Myself” references.

Free Accor Platinum Status

Since we are on the topic of signing up for random hotel loyalty programs, I might as well bring up that View From The Wing points out that the free Accor Platinum Status is still going strong!

Link To Sign Up For Offer

Although this free status has been posted about numerous times over the last few months with me saying, “Even if you don’t plan on staying at any Accor properties in the near future, you should still sign up because you never know when you could use it”, I finally have an example where this happens to be 100% true!

Last weekend I booked 2 economy tickets to Italy this Summer for my Girlfriend’s Parents, flying into Venice and leaving from Rome.

This was done with the miles they each received for signing up for the Chase Sapphire Preferred a few months ago.

Typically Economy tickets to Europe in the Summer cost around $800 – $1200, but due to the weird routing of flying into Venice and flying out of Rome, the face value of these tickets on Kayak was almost $2,000 each!

When helping them book hotels, without even looking I knew the large hotel chains like Starwood, Marriott, etc are extremely expensive in Europe.

I thought maybe they should each apply for the Chase Hyatt Visa Card and get 2 free nights each that they could then redeem in Italy. However to my surprise, Hyatt doesn’t really have that big of a presence in Italy. According to Hyatt.com, there is only 1 Hyatt property in Italy and it is the Park Hyatt Milan.

Therefore, it looks like they will have to pay for their hotels out-of-pocket.

As stated above, the Marriots, Starwoods, etc are relatively expensive when you convert Euros to USD (the average is like $300 USD a night), so I took a look at a few European chains.

To my surprise, Accor came up in the results and had some surprisingly nice hotels for the decent price of around $200 a night.

Luckily, I was smart and had signed my Girlfriend’s Parents up for the free Accor Platinum status last time I posted about it, so in the event they end up staying at any Accor branded hotels, with their free Platinum status, they will get:

• Double your points on each stay
• Dedicated customer service team
• In Sofitel, Pullman and MGallery hotels:
  • Complimentary drink and welcome gift
  • Upgrade
  • Late check-out up to 16:00
  • Guaranteed room availability (when you book at least three days prior to arrival)
• In Sofitel Thalassa Sea and Spa hotels:
  • One Thalassa Sea and Spa Institute beauty product and treatment
• In Adagio hotels:
  • Welcome gift for stays of 10 nights or more
  • Late check-out

Given that when I signed them up for the free Platinum status months ago, I had no idea that they were going to go to Europe or possibly staying at an Accor hotel, it just goes to show that you never know when these free status or free points at random hotel chains may be useful!

Also as I’ve stated many times before, these types of random free hotel statuses are great when you want to get top-tier status at Brands you actually stay at like Marriott, Starwood, etc.

More information about how to do this can be found here as well as the free Hyatt Platinum status that is currently available.

-Parag