Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
Club Carlson is offering several overlapping promotions that can lead to huge stackable point earnings if you happen to want or need a stay at a Country Inns & Suites hotel on a Sunday and Monday night:
- Get Triple (plus 7K for Sunday or Monday): Earn triple points through June 30, 2017. Plus get 5,000 bonus points per Sunday and Monday night.
- Spring Getaway: Save 15% plus get a 7K point bonus for a 2 night stay at Country Inns & Suites. Valid through May 31st 2017.
- Book with the app 3K bonus: Earn a 3K point bonus the first time you book through the Club Carlson app.
Without much effort, I found a cheap Country Inns & Suites hotel in Illinois. If I did my math correctly, you would earn 207 points per dollar relative to the base rate by stacking the three promotions above. The trick is to stay only on Sunday and Monday night in order to rake in the extra 7K points. If you have elite status and/or pay with the Club Carlson credit card, you’ll earn even more.
Here were the prices for a random two night stay beginning on a Sunday night:
And, here’s the math:
- Total paid: $150.58
- Base hotel rate: $67.83 x 2 = $135.66
- Triple Point Promo (earn 60 points per dollar rather than 20): 136 x 60 = 8,160 points
- Triple Point Promo Extra 5K Per Sunday, Monday Night: 10,000 points
- Spring Getaway: 7,000 points
- Book with the app bonus: 3,000 points
Total points earned: 28,160
- Points per dollar (based on $136 base rate): 207
- Alternatively, calculate points per dollar on all-in rate of $151: 186
Earn more points:
- With Gold elite status. Extra 7 points per dollar = 136 x 7 = 952
- Pay with Club Carlson Premier Rewards card (10X). 151 x 10 = 1,510
Below you’ll find details and links to each promotion.
Get Triple
Details and registration here.
Spring Getaway Country Inns & Suites
Valid through May 31st. Details and registration here. Use promotional code: GETAWAY.
Book With the App 3K Point Bonus
First time app bookings only. No registration required. Details here.
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So you can spend $150 and get enough points to pay for a room that’s worth about $125. Maybe. What a deal.
[…] HUGE stackable point earnings through Club Carlson (Expires 5/31/17) […]
[…] HUGE stackable point earnings through Club Carlson (Expires 5/31/17) […]
If you have the 5% CC it’s much cheaper to MS for points. you can get 10,000 Carlson points for roughly $12.
But if you had stays Sun-Mon anyways might as well get some bonus points.
I don’t think this is a terrible deal, though would much prefer stay for one Sunday night (since Sun nights are usually cheaper than Mon nights) and get something like 7K+5K+3K+4K=close to 20K cc points. I don’t see the point of booking Sunday AND Monday nights in one stay.
I’ll take it back. The GETAWAY promo does require a two night stay.
[…] Time to register for the new Club Carlson promotion: Triple Points on all Stays + a 5K bonus for every Sunday and Monday stay, through June 30, 2017. If I can have a decent hotel of this chain where I travel to…that would be great. Wait..You can stack these babies promos. […]
As someone who thinks your blog is significantly more insightful than many of your peers, this post was underwhelming. This is not a good deal at all.
There’s also an AMEX Offer for $20 off a $100 stay at Country Inn & Suites as an alternative to earning the 10x points on the Club Carlson card.
wow, I don’t recall ever seeing that offer. More details please?
It showed up on my MR-earning cards a few weeks ago:
Details
Get a one-time $20 statement credit by using your enrolled Card to spend $100+ on room rate and room charges, when you pay for your stay with Country Inns & Suites By Carlson(SM) from 3/20/17 to 5/20/17. See terms for exclusions.
Terms
Enrollment limited. Offer only valid on room rate and room charges. Offer not valid for lodging stays that are paid for before the promotion start date or after the promotion end date. Offer valid at Country Inns & Suites locations in the US. Excludes Quorvus Collection, Radisson®, Radisson Blu®, Radisson RED, Park Plaza®, and Park Inn® by Radisson. Reservations must be made online at countryinns.com, by using the mobile app or via phone by calling 1-800-456-4000. Offer not valid on international locations outside the US. Excludes gift card purchases. Must add offer to Card and use same Card to redeem. Limit 1 statement credit(s) per American Express® Card across all American Express offer channels. Statement credit will appear on your billing statement within 90 days after 5/20/2017, provided that American Express receives information from the merchant about your qualifying purchase. Statement credit may be reversed if qualifying purchase is cancelled. If American Express does not receive information that identifies your transaction as qualifying for the offer, you will not receive the statement credit. For example, your transaction will not qualify if it is not made directly with the merchant. In addition, in most cases, you may not receive the statement credit if your transaction is made with an electronic wallet or through a third party or if the merchant uses a mobile or wireless card reader to process it. By adding an offer to a Card, you agree that American Express may send you communications about the offer. POID: CFTI:0001
Seems like readers are assuming that I was suggesting mattress running for this deal. That wasn’t my intent. I certainly wouldn’t do so! But if you need the stay, it’s a great deal.
Daily Getaways (coming up later this month) have sold CC points at 0.45 cents / point, which would get 30K points for ~$135, even cheaper than this promo.
This is obviously a good deal, if your travels take you to a place where there’s a cheap Country Inns and you have need for accommodations for a Sunday and Monday night in the next month or two,
Kind of needle-in-a-haystack stuff, but somebody’s going to get a good deal.
I agree that it’s not “good enough” for a mattress run (checking in just for the points).
Oh how low we have fallen… Spending $150 for 30k ClubCarlson points? That’s considered HUGE these days?
Just like the food stacking post earlier – interesting excersise, but one with too many hoops to jump through for a mediocre reward, especially now without last night free benefit.
It’s less huge than 30,000 Starpoints for $150….but much better than the 3,000 points you would typically get (20 points per dollar). It all comes down to whether and how you use the points. Different programs exist for different types of travelers — and that’s good. If we all liked the same hotel program and points, we’d never find availability since we’d all be competing with each other.
That 28,000 points would get you 3 nights at a level 1 (9,000 points per night). Many Level 1s are typically around $700-100 a night — and sometimes, when you book ahead you can even get high demand time periods (for example, I booked a 9k points per night Park Inn during the Super Bowl). If you’re a Gold member paying with your Club Carlson credit card on this deal, the 30k you earn here combined with the annual 40k for holding the credit card and you’ve got a night in any Club Carlson property in the world. Wouldn’t be too tough to book a ~$400 or $500 weekend night room at the Radisson Blu Martinique in Manhattan with that (I booked a night there with a free night cert this past winter when the cash rate was $445 + tax…later cancelled because plans changed, so I haven’t stayed there). Not a bad trade for this promo. We could surely debate why someone would or wouldn’t want to stay at the Country Inn or the Radisson — but at the end of the day, it’s just different strokes for different folks.
I like a luxury hotel as much as anyone — but it’s nice to have different kinds of points for different situations. I don’t have any Sunday-Monday hotel needs any time soon — but if I did and I could pick up 28k or 30k points in one night, I might take it.
Good perspectives Nick. I’m glad to see Club Carlson promos showing at least some signs of life — esp. as IHG has faltered of late. Been sitting on a “ton” of leftover CC points — holding them for trips to the Middle East and/or Europe, yet may look again for options here in North America. (other than Melbourne, fl)
Cool you managed to snare 9k nights in Houston — for the super bowl too. Reminds me that of the pathetic handful of existing CC 9k spots in the US, several are very convenient to major airports (ATL and Dallas — good to remember in a pinch, even as I’ll still complain of the misleading CC credit card pitch)
I’ve even warmed up to the strategy of doing the requisite 10K annual spend on the CC (bz) card…. to earn a free night certificate. (on top of the extra 50k points that spend earns — plus the 40k annual bonus…. hmmmm)
And now they want to entice me with stackable point earning deals on cash stays? Bring ’em on. (even as check the archives)
Seems like some hotels in the U.S. can be a horrible redemption value – I looked up the three hotels in New Mexico (all in small towns) on a random Saturday in April, and all three could be had for $74, while points were 38,000 a night.