Club Carlson Bad PR for Radisson Big Night Giveaway

28 Comments

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  Delta Points May 18, 2012

  I would love to hear your “interview Heather Passe, VP Marketing” if you could call now and what she thinks about all this and your post!Thanks for all you do – René
• » Club Carlson Confusion - the #hustle blog May 18, 2012

  […] == "undefined"){ addthis_share = [];}As you may have read on Mommy Points and Loyalty Traveler, there are some major issues with the handling of these free night promotions. The gist of the […]
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  StvR May 18, 2012

  I read blogs to obtain information. Not WHINING. I’m in subscribing.
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  Ric Garrido May 18, 2012

  @StvR – Bye-bye.

  I thought this was damn insightful information. There are people who paid money for nonrefundable reservations last week based on inaccurate information provided by representatives of Club Carlson.

  I don’t see this as whining. I see it as trying to get restitution for people who were misled about the promotion terms.

  $100 may not be much money to you, but it is to me and many other people. And I think there are likely dozens of Club Carlson members who booked nonrefundable hotel stays based on inaccurate information from the Club Carlson representatives working in the social media sphere.
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  Nathan May 18, 2012

  Ric – This type of post is exactly the kind of incredible value bloggers like yourself bring to the travel world. A legitimate voice that will be heard and try to bring Club Carlson around to fix the mistakes they made. Without bloggers like you we are just angry customer ‘noise’ on some travel forums. Thanks!
• 

  Phil May 18, 2012

  I had read a post about this elsewhere and frankly responded a little cattily in saying stop whining. But as ever you do a better job than most of laying this out, and given that a) they told you directly that existing reservations would count, b) they posted that on Facebook, and then the smoking gun of c) they then went and edited that comment on Facebook to try clean up the brown stuff… then it is clear they really did wrong here. And of course it is so stupid when the whole point of the promo is to promote loyalty (which I can say works – last years promo is what introduced me to Carlson hotels, and since then I have stayed maybe 30 nights at their properties, business that otherwise would have gone to SPG)

  That said I don’t agree with your fix of allowing cancellations of existing bookings. Rather they should simply change the T&Cs to include bookings made before the promo was announced, thus making those bookings that people made still qualify
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  Colin Z May 18, 2012

  I agree with Phil. They don’t need to allow for cancelations of prepaid reservations. They simply need to amend the T&Cs of the promotion to allow these stays.
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  James May 18, 2012

  Rick, I think it is a well written and valuable post. Doesn’t seem like they thought this through all the way.

  One question that I would love your input on – I did email them about this so we will see but do you think that CC Business accounts(I have a valid one) will be paid the bonus if they are registered for the promotion? If so that would make the promotion worth around 414000 total points(with my wife being registered as well as me and our business). Thanks!
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  James May 18, 2012

  They already emailed me back. I forgot to read the business T&C which does exclude it. Too bad.
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  Ric Garrido May 18, 2012

  @Phil, Colin Z. – As I stated in this post, it is common for hotel loyalty promotions to not allow existing reservations to count for new promotions. The purpose of promotions is to drive new bookings.

  But after further reflection on my post’s solution, I think a good resolution would be to make any reservation from May 10 on eligible for the promotion bonus. As far as I can tell, it was only from May 10 when Facebook and my blog showed statements indicating advance reservations would be allowed to qualify. Therefore I think reservations from May 10 on should count.

  It is a frequent hotel loyalty promotion restriction to not allow existing reservations to count for new offers.

  SPG is the hotel loyalty program that comes to mind for regularly allowing reservations to count for promotion prior to registration.

  I have no objection to Club Carlson’s term of not allowing existing reservations to count for the promotion bonus. My complaint is that there were indicators in the social media world in the week before May 15 launch that existing reservations would count with Club Carlson Facebook and some travel blogs like mine.

  I am not arguing that someone who booked a June 1 hotel stay in February should get the bonus; although that would be nice. My argument is that people who booked May 10 to May 14 should be eligible for these bonuses after there were social media statements from official Club Carlson representatives (either PR firms or Carlson Rezidor employees) on Facebook and through me as Loyalty Traveler and satori on FlyerTalk indicating existing reservations would count.

  My case is for these people who were following this offer closely and received the go-ahead to book reservations from May 10 when the word went out that existing reservations were eligible. These are the people who were cheated.

  There might only be a handful of people affected or there may be dozens of Club Carlson members who booked rooms during that time frame from May 10-14. I don’t know. Still, they should not be stuck with a reservation they made in hopes of earning these bonuses that was possibly made due to information they received via Club Carlson Facebook or me when there was no reason to doubt the accuracy of the information.

  I titled this post “Bad PR” because somehow things went wrong last week. Stuff happens. Club Carlson can ignore it or they can address the situation.
• Club Carlson’s Big Night Giveaway 50,000 bonus points still available - Frequently Flying May 18, 2012

  […] and being offline, and was happy to see the Club Carlson Big Night Giveaway return. I’ll get to the controversy surrounding it in a moment, but in case you missed it, too, here are the promo […]
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  kshahk May 18, 2012

  So are cash+point stay valid for promotion if booked now?
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  Vito May 18, 2012

  Nice article Ric. Thanks for the heads up. Not surprised to see a backlash when companies wait until after the promotion starts to release the details.

  My travel partner and I took advantage of this deal last year and walked with 100,000 points with no problems at all –actually stayed a $42 Radisson in Orlando.

  Hoping this year works as well. Let us know if you hear anything about cash+points being valid please.
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  Oliver May 18, 2012

  Excellent post, Ric. I sent them a twitter message a couple days ago about this and was completely ignored.
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  mommypoints May 18, 2012

  Very much agree Ric, and it is actually so much worse that they also provided you with bad info directly. While it still could be just one confused person, it was one confused person that was really disseminating information that would reach a bunch of folks. I seriously doubt it would cost them much to do the right thing here, at least on a case by case basis. No reason for such a great promo to have a cloud over it like this.
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  Larry May 18, 2012

  Interesting stuff, Ric.

  I have a hard time believing this was intentional. I bet either that the T&C were changed after you got your info and one hand didn’t know what the other was doing so didn’t give you a correction, or a decision was made to permit existing reservations to count but somebody forgot to take it out of the T&C.

  It will be interesting to see if CC responds in any way. Based on no information whatsoever, I have a feeling that pre-existing reservations actually will credit for the promo. I just don’t see how this is even feasible from an IT standpoint.
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  Larry May 18, 2012

  Interesting stuff, Ric.

  I have a hard time believing this was intentional. I bet either that the T&C were changed after you got your info and one hand didn’t know what the other was doing so didn’t give you a correction, or a decision was made to permit existing reservations to count but somebody forgot to take it out of the T&C.

  It will be interesting to see if CC responds in any way. Based on no information whatsoever, I have a feeling that pre-existing reservations actually will credit for the promo. I just don’t see how this is even feasible from an IT standpoint.
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  James May 18, 2012

  I am the one who got affected too! I registered their promotions during my tight transfer time in Tokyo, so I did not read the terms at that time. I thought Club Carlson would honor it as it stated on FB and discussed on many blogs. However, I just found this “breaking” news according to your article. I am so shocked but it is too late for me to do anything because I already completed these two stays! These stays are my first time staying with Club Carlson. Come on, Club Carlson, how can you do this to your new customers!
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  Frieda May 18, 2012

  Love the post, Ric
  I found this is very disturbing. This issue has been posted in many sites from different bloggers since May 15. And as far as I know CC, a big hotel chain, has not event tried to reply or comment on the issue. At least, they can clear the air and help those who booked a non-refundable purchase between May 10 – 14, 2012

  If they can get away with something that was read and posted publicly on the internet, what make us so sure that we will get the 50,000 pts after completing one qualifying stay? They could say, well you are NOT registered in the promotion or blame the
  software for sending the wrong 50,000 promo.
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  Kris Ziel May 18, 2012

  The T&C were in the wild over a week before the promotion officially began. They stated that existing reservations would not qualify.
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  Charles Clarke May 19, 2012

  Ric, could you expand upon your “Not allowing reservations made prior to a hotel loyalty promotion is actually a common restriction for a hotel loyalty promotion.” and “The purpose of most promotions is to drive new business with new hotel reservations.”

  I’m familiar with Choice, Best Western, Hilton and Priority Club allowing existing reservations to qualify for their promotions. Though I’ve only dealt with small promotions, mainly more points, free nights or gift cards. More rewarding loyal customers than a big one like Club Carlson’s that do seem more designed to drive new business. Though, thinking about it, Best Western’s free night promotion last year saved 36,000 points for us. That’s almost as good as the 44,000 Country Inn and Suites offer and I don’t think it had a limit on number of registrants, though it did require more nights to earn.

  Are you only talking about big promotions, or have you seen little promotions that don’t allow existing reservations to count? Examples? What am I missing?

  I agree that they could “fix” this by allowing reservations after May 10th to qualify. Though, if it is based on only allowing reservations made after registering to qualify (which it isn’t clear to me from the T&C whether they mean before registering or before the promotion started), it wouldn’t necessarily be an easy fix because you would be checking different data.

  Well written argument and mea culpa, as usual.

  Kris Ziel’s point is well taken, though those T&C’s weren’t official, but from an HTML comment. So, are they more valid than a reply from a company employee or two?
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  Ric Garrido May 19, 2012

  @Charles Clarke – The statement I made about hotel promotions not applying to reservations made prior to promotion registration is just my observation over the years.

  I think it is commonly a term of hotel promotions to not allow reservations booked before a member registers for a hotel promotion to count for the promotion bonus.

  The purpose of most hotel promotions is to drive new reservations is something I have heard hotel loyalty managers say.

  Kris Ziel – I have a copy of the wording from the Radisson html code when the promotion countdown first appeared.

  ” Promotion is not valid on existing reservations and is subject to availability.”

  This term was in that html code.

  The html text was removed a couple days before I was contacted by Club Carlson’s PR rep to write about this offer prior to the launch.

  We exchanged some emails and I was asked if I had questions regarding the promotion. I asked two questions. A few hours later I received an email response to my two questions which I posted here in their exact wording.

  “1. Points + Cash award nights do qualify for this promotion because the cash portion is point-eligible

  2. Stays booked prior to the promotion launch are eligible as long as the stay lands within the promotion window. Member just needs to register for the promotion before check-out.”

  Why should I doubt the response from the Club Carlson representative, regardless of the html wording from the promotion page that had been removed a couple days earlier?

  The PR person’s job is to be the intermediary between the press and the company and supply accurate information so the public gets accurate info.

  This post is titled Bad PR since I had to try and figure out where the bad information came from regarding existing reservations. And it happened in two places with my blog and the Facebook response and these were likely two different people.

  This really is not a big issue in the grand scheme of the promotion with probably far fewer than 1% of promotion registrants affected. The promotion offers are great and only a handful of the thousands of people participating in the promotion were affected by this “existing reservations” term.

  But it is a significant issue for those people who did see Facebook and my blog and other blogs where it was posted that existing reservations would count and then made a reservation based on that inaccurate information. Some of these reservations were likely nonrefundable reservations.
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  Ric Garrido May 19, 2012

  @Frieda – Club Carlson is a good loyalty program and you shouldn’t have any concerns about the promotion being honored. Tens of thousands of us got 50,000 points last fall from the first Radisson Big Night Giveaway.

  This whole issue regarding “existing reservations” is a small hiccup in the whole promotion.

  My main reason for even writing about this is to advocate for hotel loyalty programs to follow Tim Winship’s advice and get all the promotion terms and conditions out prior to a promotion launch so hotel guests can plan their travels in a timely fashion.

  The hotel loyalty industry trend lately seems to be keeping members guessing up to the day a hotel loyalty promotion starts.

  This Club Carlson issue is an example of why it is not a good idea to leak out bits and pieces of the promotion terms prior to the promotion launch.
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  Colin May 19, 2012

  Ric,

  Given that pre-existing reservations now do not qualify, has their stance on points and cash reservations changed, as well?
• Club Carlson Does the Right Thing – Pre-Existing Reservations for “Big Night Giveaway” Will Count! - Mommy Points May 19, 2012

  […] reservations based on what they had read on the official company Facebook page.  Deals We Like and Loyalty Traveler also wrote similar posts about the issue in the last 48 hours.  Other bloggers and upset customers […]
• Existing Reservations Will Count for Big Night Giveaway (Confirmed) | Indulge the Wanderlust May 19, 2012

  […] what others had to say about the issue over at Mommy Points, Deals We Like, The Hustle Blog, and Loyalty Traveler. Overall, many members have been disappointed by the way that Radisson and Club Carlson were […]
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  i think this change may bring something new experience.
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