Point expiration suspension:
We are extending our pause on the expiration of Radisson Rewards points. Any points that were set to expire between March 1, 2020 and December 30, 2021 will now expire on December 31, 2021, if the account remains inactive.
Elite status extension:
We have extended your 2020 status – whether it’s Silver, Gold or Platinum – through February 2022, for those whose status would have expired in February 2021. This means you will continue to enjoy all the great Silver, Gold or Platinum member benefits you have access to today.
Elite earning roll over:
All eligible nights and stays earned in 2020 will roll over to 2021 and be applied toward maintaining or increasing your Elite status in 2022.
e-Cert extension:
e-Certs earned using the Radisson Rewards Visa® Card, that were scheduled to expire between March 1 and May 31, 2021, can be redeemed through June 30, 2021.
Radisson Rewards has announced that they are extending elite status for those whose status would have expired in February 2021 until February 2022. Furthermore, they are extending the expiration dates for points and free night certificates set to expire in the next few months. This is about as customer-friendly a move as one could want — let’s hope that other chains follow suit.
From the announcement from Radisson:
As COVID-19 affects travel plans around the world, we believe our Radisson Rewards members deserve to use the points that they have acquired and should not be penalized due to circumstances out of their control. As a result, Radisson Hotels is suspending it’s point expiration policy by 6 months, effective March 1, 2020. We have also extended the elite status of our members through February 2022, for those that would have expired February 2021. In addition, e-certs earned using the Radisson Reward Visa card, that are scheduled to expire between March 1 and June 30, 2020, can be redeemed through June 30, 2021.
To parse that in bullet points:
- Point expiration policy is suspended for 6 months effective March 1st (This is not totally clear to me — I think this means that if you had points scheduled to expire within 6 months of March 1st, they will either not expire until September 1st or perhaps you’ll get an additional 6 months added)
- Elite status: Extended until February 2022 for those whose status would otherwise expire in February 2021. In other words, if you earned status last year (in 2019), your status would ordinarily be valid until February of next year (February 2021). Now you’ll be extended to February 2022 — in other words, you don’t need to make any more stays this year to maintain status.
- Free night certificates: If you have a free night certificate earned from spending $10K on the Radisson credit card and it was set to expire between 3/1/20 and 6/30/20, it will now be valid until 6/30/2021.
This is a very customer-friendly move. Frankly, I’m surprised at how generous this is. While this is obviously the kind of policy that customers want, I didn’t expect that any chain was going to free members from the requirement to stay at all this year to maintain status. Then again, Radisson doesn’t give much in the way of benefits to members with status (and they give away Gold status with a credit card), so it isn’t an expensive proposition from one standpoint. Still, at a time when hotels are bleeding money / closing locations for months, I am surprised that they are essentially dropping requirements altogether rather than giving triple or quadruple night credit or something that encourages you to come back and spend some money at their properties when we get past the COVID-19 pandemic.
We can all hope for other chains to do the same, though I suspect we’ll be more likely to see some chains instead offer heavy incentives to encourage customers to spend money at their properties when this is over. Of course, a move like this one from Radisson would make me more loyal — it’s good to see that Radisson is offering a solution that doesn’t encourage unnecessary travel at the moment and comes out more beneficial for customers than for Radisson. Kudos to them for doing well by customers.
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My free night certificate was extended to the 6/30/21 deadline (originally March 2021) back in late August/early September. I never received notice, I just noticed it in the app, and there were several other data points I saw online which seemed to indicate they all were. It is weird they waited months to make a public announcement. In the meantime, Marriott and Hyatt both extended their certificates to later dates (August and December 2021, respectively), which now makes the Radisson move seem weak.
[…] we learned that Hilton will extend elite status to 2021 or even 2022 for some. Radisson announced the day before that they are extending elite status. IHG announced two weeks ago that they are […]
Where is the expiration date on the account? I logged in but I don’t see where the expiration date is even listed?
[…] today, we reported that Radisson has decided to extend member status for another year and I noted that it was generous and I was surprised. Hilton takes things a step […]
Too bad Marriott didn’t extend status or do anything at all.
Actually, Marriott already announced the extension of free night certificates, points, and suite night upgrades (status benefit) almost two weeks ago:
https://frequentmiler.com/marriott-coronavirus-cancellation-policy-changes-certificate-extensions/
Like Hyatt, Marriott has further said that there will be adjustments to elite status earning, but they don’t yet know what they’ll be. I think it’s way too early to announce those — right now, they are closing many properties through the end of April or in some cases until the beginning of June, laying off thousands of employees, and probably focusing on whatever they can to plug the holes in the ship for now. If this gets worse in April as some expect it will, those closures may last longer. If we get control of it and things start to reopen May 1st, that’s another situation altogether. Since essentially nobody is staying in hotels right now anyway, there is little pressure for Marriott to make an announcement — it’s not like their announcement today will affect your stay next week or next month since you’re likely not traveling next week or next month anyway (generally speaking of “you” as a random member, I obviously don’t know your situation specifically).
I hope their answer is going to be that they extend status with no stays required, but I’d be surprised if that’s the case. They’ve essential gone down to near $0 in revenue in many properties (that are now closed). When they reopen, their goal (both for their shareholders and hotel owners and also for their thousands and thousands of employees and those outside vendor employees that count on the hotels being open for their jobs, etc) will be to get as many heads in beds as possible. If they automatically extend status, they may be selling themselves short by taking away the incentive to stay with them — whereas if things re-open in June and they announce double elite night credit on all stays through the end of the year, people still have six months to stay half the number of required stays ordinarily required. If this drags on and stuff stays closed into August / companies continue to ban corporate travel, maybe they’ll reduce tier requirements by some percentage and also offer double elite night credit or something like that or maybe they’ll decide there is little they can do to encourage business this year and then they’ll extend status into next year.
At the end of the day, the entire purpose of the loyalty program is to drive repeat business, so it’s not altogether unreasonable that they would use it as a tool to bring people back in the fold when travel returns to normal. But to try to take a guess about when that will be today and announce some different qualification requirement that may end up being unreasonably difficult (because stuff stays closed longer) or too easy or taking the chance that their announcement gets misinterpreted as trying to encourage people to travel today rather than staying at home just doesn’t have much upside for them. Again, it’s not like their lack of an announcement today is going to change a member’s choice of hotel next week in most cases, so they are probably better off letting it ride until we at least start seeing cases drop or attitudes moving toward a return to normal.
On the other hand, a program like Radisson that really only offers bonus point earning for elite members (rather than upgrades or free breakfast) and that ordinarily sells that status for whatever their share of revenue on a credit card with a $75 fee is has little reason not to extend it. I guess a program like Radisson is counting on their point earning (and perhaps price point) to be the incentive to choose them and thus extending elite status encourages you to spend money.
A lot of conjecture there, but those are my thoughts. I expect we’ll see an announcement from Marriott and Hyatt, but I’d be very surprised if it came before mid to late April. If things get worse during the beginning of April, expect that announcement in May.
This is nice, at first glance allowing you to combine multiple years’ free nights into one stay.
I have one that expires June 30th, so I trust that will be extended. I have another expiring in November so we’ll wait and see.
That leaves only IHG that has offered nothing. I have one night expiring in June, but 2 credit cards that will get the chop if no offer is made.
IHG has been extending certs by 6 months if you email and create a case number, but I haven’t published that because I expect that they will do better than that.
Thanks.
have certs expiring 6/30/2020 so they should be extended but the expiration is still unchanged (hopefully to be corrected/processed soon)
Saw in my account that my Gold status is now valid through 2/22. Very customer friendly gesture, Radisson. Thank you!
[…] See our post for more detail. […]
My 3 free night certs expire on July 31. So new policy doesn’t help. Radission should extend ALL certs thru June 30, 2021. Not just the ones that expire in June.
That stinks. Hopefully, we’ll be able to use them again in July. However, as we get closer to that time, it might be worth calling to see what they can do for you (or perhaps they’ll publicly extend farther by then). I agree with you — it seems kind of weird to extend the certificates for those customers who had almost an entire year to use them (certs set to expire in March 2020 were issued in March 2019, so those folks had at least 10 months before this popped up on anyone’s radar — though on the flip side, maybe some of those folks had reservations in February or March…it’s a messy situation). In your case, you only had maybe 6 or 7 months to use your certificate, so it definitely seems reasonable to extend it further. Hopefully they’ll work with people in your spot.