Following a recent article focusing on credit cards that allow you to earn Radisson Rewards points, I wanted to provide some additional information on the Radisson Rewards expiration rules.
With over 1,100 hotels across Europe and 116,382 bedrooms across EMEA, Radisson rewards offers a good and sometimes overlooked hotel redemption opportunity. The scheme is also extremely generous when compared to some of the other hotel reward programmes.
As we recently wrote in our article on the Radisson Rewards Credit Card, the value of a Radisson Rewards point will vary depending on the redemption. However in the three scenarios we ran using points instead of cash provided values ranging from 0.3-0.7p per point with an average of 0.5p.
With guests earning 20 points for every $1 spent at a Radisson Rewards hotel, customers could be receiving a benefit in the region of 10% of the value of their stay! As such learning the answer to the question – do Radisson points expire – could save you from losing some rather valuable points…
So when do Radisson rewards points expire?
According to the Radisson Rewards website, the rules surrounding points expiry are as follows:
“If there is no Gold Points activity in your Radisson Rewards account for any 24-month period, we may, at any time and in our sole discretion and without notice or liability to you, void and cancel any or all of your Gold Points.”
Now the important thing to focus on there is the definition of ‘activity’. This doesn’t mean that you need to stay at a Radisson Rewards hotel, all you need to do is either spend points or alternatively earn points on the account. There are a number of easy ways to do this as we set out below.
Spending points to prevent Radisson point expiration
We’ve listed the various options for spending points on your Radisson Rewards account below starting with the options which require the least number of points.
- Donate to Charity: Through the Radisson rewards website you can donate a minimum of 1,000 points (although we hope you’d donate more if you can J) to some great causes including SOS Children’s Villages, American Red Cross or First Climate.
- Transfer to Air Miles: Radisson rewards can be transferred to 35 airline frequent flyer programmes at a rate of 10:1. The minimum transaction size is 2,000 points. With a Avios point worth somewhere in the region of 1p, transferring 10 Radisson Rewards point (worth 5p) for 1 Avios point doesn’t provide great value but will at least prevent your Radisson Reward points expiring.
- Book a Nights Stay: The minimum number of points for a category 1 redemption is 9,000 although within the UK the cheapest redemption available is category 2 at 15,000 points.
- Redeem for Pre-Paid MasterCard: 35,000 points can be redeemed for a £25 pre-paid MasterCard equating to 0.07p per point which is very poor when compared to the 0.4p you could receive if used for a hotel redemption.
Earning to stop points expiring
The simplest way of earning Radisson Reward point is to always make sure you book directly through the hotels website and allocating the stay to your Radisson Rewards account. Alternative options include:
- Transferring points from American Express Membership Rewards: Points earned from the likes of the American Express Gold Card can be transferred at a rate of 1 MR point to 3 Radisson points. This can provide exceptionally good value as we discuss here.
- Planning a trip to Bicester Village: You can earn 10 points for every £1 spent at Bicester Village. With a value of as much as 4p for every £1 this equates to roughly 4% ‘cashback’.
- Buy Radisson Points: As a last resort you could purchase points at a rate of $7 for 1,000 points…
- Car Rental: If you use either Sixt, National, Enterprise, Budget, Avis or Alamo for your car rental you can earn points on your spending.
Summary – Do Radisson points expire?
Yes your Radisson points expire after 24 months of non-activity but as we’ve seen within this article there are numerous ways in which you can create activity on your account. I’d be amazed if you couldn’t find a method of preventing those points expiring.
Hopefully you’ve found this article on Radisson Rewards expiration useful and as always please do share your thoughts in the comments section below.