How to do a Club Carlson Status Match…And Why You Want To

Yesterday I wrote about Club Carlson’s yummy First Quarter promo: between January 10 and March 16, you can earn 60 points per dollar spent on each stay.  This promo is a way to rack up thousands of points fairly quickly.

Club Carlson points are especially valuable if you’ve got a vacation planned in Europe, because you can redeem 50,000 point/nights for luxury hotels such as the Radisson May Fair in London or the Radisson Champs Elysees in Paris, which can go for over $500/night.

Pair this promo with some status, and things get even better

If you are a Silver Elite member with Club Carlson, you get:

• an online booking bonus of 2,000 points/stay
• a complimentary room upgrade
• a 25% point bonus on any points you earn during your stays
• early check-in/late check-out

Do you have status?

In order to have status with a hotel chain, you need to be a member of their loyalty program.  Each hotel chain has different requirements for how to achieve their different levels of status.

Often, if you have a co-branded credit card from a major hotel chain (Hilton, Hyatt, Priority Club, Club Carlson, Marriott…) you will earn instant status for as long as you use the card.  This is an easy way to get status.  And this is where the fun begins, because if you have status with one chain, you can leverage it to gain status with another.

In my case, I had Gold Status with Hilton, and I was able to use that to gain Silver Elite status with Club Carlson.  My recent Platinum Amex acquisition granted me instant SPG Gold Status, which I then used to gain Gold Status with Club Carlson.

Here’s how to get it:

You can earn status in several ways:

1. Stay frequently in Club Carlson properties. 15 nights or 10 stays total will earn you Silver Status, while 35 nights or 20 stays will get you Gold Status, and after 75 nights or 50 stays, you will achieve Concierge.
2. Get a Club Carlson Credit Card.  The Premier Rewards Visa and the Business Rewards Visa both grant you Gold Elite Status while you have the card.  The basic version of the card, the Rewards Visa, grants you Silver Elite Status.
3. Do a Status Match.  This is a strategy that most people don’t know about.  If you’ve already got status with a hotel, you can get this status matched by other hotel programs.  Some programs are more lenient about this than others; Club Carlson is great.  Simply write a polite email to clubcarlson@carlson.com, noting that while you really enjoy staying at their properties, you have status with another hotel.  You would love to have a status match so that you could easily justify staying at Club Carlson properties more frequently.  Include a screen shot that displays your current level of status.  Club Carlson will either match you to Silver Elite or Gold Elite.  Instantly!  And then you really can enjoy a different level of service and comfort.

Happy Traveling.

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