Radisson Rewards recently announced that it would split into two. North American residents would continue as members of Radisson Rewards Americas. (although you are free to sign up for the “other” Radisson Rewards as well).

The new Radisson Rewards Americas has announced details of its award chart, and the award category changes that will take place in mid-June 2021. Here’s what the new award chart will look like.

The most obvious change is the disappearance of the 9,000 point per night award category, although only a handful of hotels qualified.

The most expensive hotels will cost 75,000 points instead of 70,000 but, again, there aren’t actually that many hotels in North America that qualify.

The complete list of award category changes can be found by clicking here.

What is Reward Saver?

RewardSaver is a discounted redemption rate offering 33% off of the points for an Award Night at a given hotel on eligible nights. These members-only deals can happen anytime, anywhere and will never be seasonal or dependent on pre-determined peak and off-peak rates.

This is quite clever. I don’t think that anybody believes that a peak / standard / off-peak award chart is anything other than an excuse to charge more points for award nights at peak times.  Radisson Rewards Americas is going to avoid this criticism completely, by simply offering discounted award nights at what surely will be off-peak or low-occupancy times of the year.

Is This a Devaluation?

I don’t really think so. I could only find 6 hotels moving from 9,000 points to 15,000 per night. The 75,000 point per night category will only have 10 hotels.

But I lost count somewhere around 50… for those hotels that currently cost 28,000 or more points per night, but will soon cost only 15,000 points per night.

There are also more than 100 hotels that currently cost 38,000 points or more, but will soon cost 30,000 points per night.

The Bottom Line

The problem with looking through a list of Radisson Rewards Americas hotels is that there are so few that could be categorized as “aspirational”. Even if you aren’t totally focused on the luxury end, it’s hard to tell whether an out-of-the-way Country Inn becoming cheaper is relevant, until you happen to need a hotel in just that location.

But these changes look a lot more like a simplification than a MASSIVE DEVALUATION.  Let’s see what happens with the international version of Radisson Rewards, where there are far more high-end aspirational hotels in major cities such as London.