Update 7/25/23: This is now live, so you can book Radisson properties using Choice Privileges points on the Choice website. We’ll have some further analysis soon regarding redemption rates on Radisson properties, but wanted to give you a heads up now that these are now bookable.
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Last year Choice Hotels made the surprise announcement that they were purchasing Radisson Rewards Americas. Since then they added the ability to transfer points between the two programs at a 1:2 ratio (Choice being the 1 and Radisson being the 2).
What we hadn’t known was when Radisson properties would be fully moved over to the Choice Privileges ecosystem. That date has now been announced – it’ll be happening on July 18, 2023.
July 17 will therefore be the last day that you can redeem Radisson Rewards Americas points. After that date, you won’t be able to earn or redeem Radisson points. If you have a Radisson Rewards Americas points balance, those will be converted to Choice at a 2:1 ratio. If you have accounts with both programs and both are registered with the same first name, last name and email address, that conversion should happen automatically. Elite night credits and elite tier status will also be carried over if applicable.
If the names and/or email addresses on your Choice and Radisson accounts don’t match, you’ll need to update one of those to ensure they do match. If for some reason you’d rather not do that, one solution would be to set up a Radisson account which does have the same details as your Choice account. That’s because Radisson lets you transfer points to other Radisson accounts for free. You could therefore transfer the points from your old Radisson account to your new one and then just wait for those to be converted to Choice unless you want to do that now. That’s a more convoluted way of doing it, so it doesn’t really seem worth doing things that way, but I wanted to throw it out as an option anyway in case there’s someone who that does help for some reason.
If you have any existing award stays booked at Radisson properties for July 18 onwards, those are unaffected. If you have any paid stays at Radisson properties after that date, you’ll need to ensure you have a Choice account in order to earn points on those stays.
Something important to note: If you have Radisson points that you’ll want to use to book stays with Choice anytime in the next few weeks, it’d be worth going ahead and moving those points over now rather than waiting for Choice to do that for you. The reason why is that Choice has advised that if you have Radisson points, those will be transferred to your Choice Privileges account within a few weeks of July 18. Within a few weeks of July 18 takes us into early August, so it’d be a shame if you were counting on having those points transferred over promptly in case there is indeed a delay of a few weeks.
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The transfer of Radisson to Choice at 2:1 was pretty crappy! My 100k plus Radisson just being 50k Choice doesn’t get much. Womp womp!
I have a reservation that was booked on Radisson America that has transferred to Choice Can’t modify or cancel it any longer. Now that the hotel is Choice there are suites available for the same points and I’d like to book that instead. Called and was told to call the hotel because the agent couldn’t figure it out. I’ll give it a few days and monitor it. Other interesting thing is that the hotel details show the room rate as $22,000 a night and not a point redemption.
screen shot that Baby! Keep the res! Forget the suite. You’ll be the Queen of CPP. The bestest redemption ever!
My points transferred over. Only have < 20k Radisson left..but…was Radisson Gold, now Choice Platinum. Yeah baby!! I’ll leverage my Choice status to Penn Play Advantage! Look at all those benefits. Yeah baby!
Points not converted yet it seems, still have 0 balance in Choice.
Choice hotels can be an incredible value. I stayed in Rome at the Hotel Principessa Isabella for 7 days on points. They only charged 8000 per night. The hotel was close to everything – Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps etc. Vincenzo at the front desk provided detail directions to all major sites.
I would recommend it to everyone.
Yes, stayed 5 nights on points and got a triple room. Complimentary breakfast was also good! Rooms were going for over $500 a night in May. Best value I’ve ever had so far.
I have points in my Radisson Asia (i forgot what its called, the non-america Radisson acct). Is that account affected as well?
That’s not affected as the Radisson Rewards program for outside of the Americas isn’t being bought by Choice.
So I can’t have the radisson points moved to my spouse’s Choice account? Can I transfer them from one to the other once they get moved to a new Choice account that I’ll have to set up?
You used to be able to move Radisson points from one person’s account to another person’s Radisson account for free. That’s not possible with Choice, so it might be worth trying to set up a Radisson account for your spouse if that’s still possible and transfer the points to them now.
Where are you seeing or getting the details of the delay from? Not confirmed anywhere that it is delayed by a week.
I saw on their website or app yesterday that Radisson properties would be joining Choice Privileges on July 25 now. That seems to be backed up by the terms of Choice’s extended promo – they’ve added wording to that stating that Radisson properties won’t be eligible for that promo until July 25.
Linking my Choice to Radisson accounts was a royal pain. Lots of website errors and timeouts. Tried to do a transfer of 1k points to test. Got the message that said I’d receive an email and points would be there soon. Been nearly a week now and still no email and no points.
So, my 550,000 RR will now become 225,000 Choice points? I guess I should go book Grenada before the 18th.
They haven’t announced what the pricing would be for the hotels in terms of Choice points. It could go up or down, probably it would go up slightly. For example, Category 1 Radisson is 15K points, but Category 1 Choice is 8K points, so those would probably be going up from 7.5K Choice points to 8K Choice points.
Radisson Gold still…
will I become Choice gold….oh who cares…Choice Privileges status is nearly meaningless.If they have nice US hotels at regular Choice rates, this could be really great.
“That’s because Radisson lets you transfer points to other Radisson accounts for free.” – How?
You have to give them a call and they’ll do it. I did it a few years ago and it was nice and easy.
Stephen, Myname at Radisson is diff from Choice but the email is same. Am I able to change the name with Radisson to match Choice? Thanks much!
I’d assume so. If you can’t do it online, give them a call.
Hi Stephone, I tried doing that online but was able to do so. When I called the number at radisson they were not working. Is there any other way to do it? Thanks! The difference is my name. Thanks!
When you say that Radisson weren’t working, do you mean the number wasn’t working or that it was outside of office hours? I’m not sure if this is the number you tried calling, but it looks like 1-888-288-8889 is the number you’d need to call.
Thanks Stephen. When I checked the phone number from Radisson website they were not working. Until I tried the number you gave. Thanks again for the number. Its is the same one after I click the link from the email sent. No luck moving my points from Radisson to Choice but I will keep trying.
Many Thanks!
go into your profile at Radisson and Choice and change your name so that they match, All the profile info has to match
Thanks MaryJane,
I tried that but was not able to change the name. You can change everything else but not the name. I managed to open a new choice account with everything the same but still not not able to move points over from Radisson to choice. 🙁
I’ve got a boatload of Choice points. P2 and I had the credit card for many years, and just as we were getting ready to starting thinking about post-pandemic travel and redeem in Europe, the non-Americas program got nerfed.
I think I’m just going to go ahead and manually transfer them all to choice now. I don’t want to wait for Radisson/Choice to do it for me and risk a name mismatch or whatever.