Carlson announced a devaluation of its own today, joining last year’s Hilton bloodbath and last month’s Hyatt changes.  The announcement is on the Club Carlson website and will go into effect March 15th.

The key takeaways, roughly prioritized by significance:

• Carlson is creating a new Category 7, 70k points per night, tier that will initially include:
• Radisson Royal Hotel, Dubai
• Radisson Blu Le Dokhan’s Hotel, Paris Trocadero
• Radisson Blu 1835 Hotel & Thalasso, Cannes
• Radisson Blu Le Metropolitan Hotel, Paris Eiffel
• Radisson Blu Hotel Champs Elysees, Paris
• The May Fair
• Plaza on the River, London
• art’otel, Amsterdam
• Radisson Royal Hotel, Moscow

The full list of changes is on Carlson’s website.

• The online booking bonus will be restricted to promotional periods, rather than for all bookings.

• The points bonus on stays is being cut to 35% for Gold Elite and 15% for Silver Elite members.

• Award nights will count towards status.

• Hotel restaurant spend will earn points

Hack My Trip points out that this devaluation was inevitable, following the overly generous promotions in the last two years.  I agree:  It’s hard to be surprised that any of these one-for-one stay promotions were sustainable in any way.  More importantly, the changes could have been worse.

To top things off, the signup bonus for the Carlson Visa works out to about four free nights (by strategically booking two stays of two nights) at any top tier hotel.  That’s quite a bit more than Hyatt (two nights), Starwood (not even one night at a Category 7), or the Citi Hilton card (two nights).

With the cobranded Visa card, I have Gold Elite status with Carlson.  The points bonus cut stings ever slightly, but historically, I’ve earned 90% of my Carlson points from various promotions (50k points for a $80 stay?  Sign me up!) and the credit card signup bonus.

Even with award nights now counting towards status, I would not be much closer than I was from just revenue nights (maybe 9/35 instead of 2/35 last year).  Absent shifting my hotel stays nearly completely to Carlson, I’m still hopelessly far from hitting the Concierge level at 75 nights.  Doing so would involve completely forgoing SPG status (and my stays), which have served me quite well for my many trips to Hawaii.

Carlson is running its first quarter promotion from Monday (January 6th) to April 13th, 2014:  Stay 3 nights and earn 38k points.

Importantly, there are three take aways:

• As no further (bonus) points are earned by staying more, this promotion is geared towards the infrequent Carlson guest.
• Registration is required before the first eligible checkout date, so it’s worth registering now rather than forgetting.
• 38k points isn’t quite for a night at a top-tier hotel (50k are needed).  It’s not the promotion of yesteryear, but it’s a reasonable bonus for the odd Carlson night here or there.

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.

Carlson is offering a buy one, get one free night promotion for its North American Radisson hotels, limit one free night per person.  While the promotion is limited to the first 50k signups, that limit hasn’t been reached even though the promotion has been open for nearly a month.  Rather importantly, stays must be booked by October 31st (for dates between now and December 31st, 2012) to qualify under the promotion.

While it’s not as good as the 50k points–good for a night at any Radisson worldwide–for a single Radisson stay offers of the past, there can still be considerable value to be extracted.  A cheap $75 night in San Jose yields a $250-300 night at the Radisson Hotel Fisherman’s Wharf.

In addition to this free night promotion,  Carlson is offering bonus points on a sliding scale based on the number of nights stayed between October 1st and December 31st:

• 2,000 bonus points per night when you stay one to five nights
• 4,000 bonus points per night when you stay six to nine nights
• 6,000 bonus points per night when you stay 10 to 20 nights

For my night in Dublin, I came across a 65 Euro room at the Radisson Blu.  Rather conveniently, Club Carlson announced their triple points promotion within a few hours of my booking.

Having only managed to catch a few hours of sleep at the Sheraton London Heathrow from when I checked in to when I had to be out in back to catch the bus to the airport (having been advised by the front desk clerks to get to the airport about 1.5 hours earlier than I needed to be), I was quite happy that I was able to check in right away.

In terms of my priorities for a hotel room, I’ve found a new one:  Blackout curtains.  Since I had only managed a few hours of sleep at the Sheraton London Heathrow from when I checked in to when I thought I had to head to the airport, I was dead tired.  Thankfully, I was able to make the room pitch black and catch a quick nap before heading into Dublin.

With my flight from New York arriving from San Francisco a bit early, I had a 24.5 hour layover at SFO.  After the Club Carlson 50k promotion went live, I registered and began looking for a chance to stop by a Radisson to participate in the promotion.  Even as I plan to use the points towards a night for a substantially more expensive hotel abroad, I couldn’t bring myself to mattress run locally (even with the $100/nt rate that showed up at the Radisson Lexington in December).  Since I needed to overnight in the Bay Area, I chose to stay at the Radisson San Francisco Airport Bay Front hotel.

I “splurged” and spent $5 at the time of booking for a bay view room.

I’ve come to set a few minimum standards with my hotel stays.  I want a comfortable bed.  I want a fast internet connection.  I want peace and quiet for when I’m trying to sleep.  For hotels with airport shuttles, I want the shuttle service to be frequent and run during the hours posted (unlike what happened at the aloft Dulles North to me in July).

My shuttle arrived within a few minutes of stepping out of the terminal.   Check-in was fast and painless.  Upon entering my room, I heard the occupants next door.  Since it was 10PM and I had little intention of going to bed right away, this didn’t really bother me as I wanted to catch up on my email and use the internet connection for a bit.  Around 1AM PST, my neighbors were still talking and laughing.  I wound up calling the front desk and was able to get moved to a new room on a quieter floor.

By the time I called, I had heard four distinct voices next door.  As I was leaving, I passed another party of four going into that room carrying several cases of beer into the room.  Needless to say, asking for another room was the wisest move I made all trip.  With my basic priorities of hotel stays satisfied, I settled in for the night.

Carlson is opening its first Radisson Blu in the United States.  For the first 50k registrants, staying one night will yield a 50k Carlson Club point bonus.   Based on the Carlson award chart, this ranges from 1 to 5 free nights for a single stay, depending on category.