Club Carlson is offering a 50% bonus on points purchases from now through November 10th, 2012. As points are normally priced at $7 per 1k points, this brings the cost to $4.67 per 1k points. Club Carlson imposes a 40k points per year purchase cap (or under this promotion, effectively 60k points).
Carlson’s top-tier properties normally run 50k points. While there have been far cheaper ways of obtaining 50k points historically, purchasing points can be cheaper than paying the nightly room rate. For one night in Paris, July 12th-13th room rates for the Radisson properties are hovering around $410+. In comparison, buying 50k points would cost $233.33 under this promotion.
Club Carlson offers additional redemption options in the form of transfers to airlines.
- 2k points to 250 airline miles (8:1)
- 50k points to 8k airline miles (6.25:1)
- 100k points to 18k airline miles (5.56:1)
United is currently running a tiered bonus scheme for transfers from hotel programs to Mileage Plus through November 30th:
- Transfer in 5k miles: 1k bonus.
- Transfer in 10k miles: 2.5k bonus
- Transfer in 25k miles: 5k bonus
- Transfer in 50k miles: 15k bonus
While Loyalty Traveler discusses converting Carlson Points to United Miles en masse to take advantage of this. Buying 60k points (for $280) for an account with orphaned (6k or more) Carlson points in it can be a viable option as well. The combined 66k balance converts to 10k United miles hitting the 2.5k bonus tier.
Ordinarily, United charges $37.625/1k to buy miles directly. This scheme, primed with a small amount of orphaned Club Carlson points, brings the cost down to about 2.24cpm.