While I am yet to recover fully from the Club Carlson massacre, I think it is important for us to determine if the CC card is worthy of MSing any more. Here are the factors to be considered in valuing CC points after this massacre.
1. No more BOGO.
2. Annual bonus of 1 free night after spending 10k in a year in any of CC hotels, "within US" (how generous
). May be they have 2 aspirational properties in US - Chicago and Phily.
Now to the comparison.
1. I would rate their top properties to not more than SPG or Hyatt category 3 & 4 respectively. 50k points vs 7k vs 15k. One has to spend 10k vs 7k vs 3k. Hyatt wins by a huge margin here.
2. If trying to compare with Category 7 of IHG at 35k, IHG wins during point breaks by a huge, huge margin and beats CC even during normal days with a spend of 7k vs 10k.
3. What about CC's close competitors Marriott and Hilton? In case of Marriott, let us consider Category 6 or even 7 for 30k and 35k for which spend to be generated is not more than 7k. In case of Hilton, let us take Category 7 which requires 30k to 60k points or 5k to 10k spend. Also don't forget 4 for 5 redemptions for both Marriott and Hilton which rates them higher than CC.
4. What the heck? Even Wyndham with the upcoming change will require 7.5k in spend to get a free night in their top property, if what they have advertised so far turns out to be true, though I would not trust them and place them in the same trustworthiness of CC.
5. I am not too familiar with Choice hotels but I think their top hotel is 35k which is again 7k spend.
That leaves CC the last in the popular list of chain hotels. In just one stroke the program has changed from most valuable to least valuable. Kudos to CC management for this remarkable acheivement.
Value perse, I don't think we can assign more than 0.15-0.20 cents per dollar per CC point, with the removal of BOGO. 5x will equal to .75-1% return. Even my credit union CC or PayPal card fetches better return as "cash back" at the lower end of that valuation and almost the same return at the higher end of the valuation at 1%, though cash back is much better than ever devaluing hotel currencies.
Some personal takeaways for me after this master stroke from CC:
1. Never trust any airline or hotel or bank. They are capable of screwing us at their will.
2. All these loyalty programs are nothing more than scams and lure us more in showing carrots and eventually turn us in to nothing short of addicts.
3. Cash is king, rich or poor. For regular MS, do not MS more than min spend on ANY of the loyalty program cards. Just not worth it.
4. Even for regular spend, use cards like Fidelity Amex. By doing so, I can derive a personal satisfaction that it is me who is screwing these hotels or airlines or banks and not vice versa.
5. Don't listen to anyone out there not advocating cashback cards and sells loyalty cards.
Thanks to CC for teaching me some important lessons and for helping me decide which card is better for regular spend and MS.
Note: I may be wrong in some of the assumptions i made above but my conclusion is cashback cards are superior to any program out there for most of us and families in particular.