Good morning everyone. A few days ago, I got an email from Radisson Rewards about transferring Radisson Rewards Points into airline miles. I figured it would be a bad deal in terms of the value you get from Radisson Rewards Points, but thought it might be useful if you have airline frequent flyer miles expiring soon and need some activity to reset the expiration date. I went through the transfer process to convert 2,000 Radisson Rewards Points into 200 American Airlines miles. Trust me, I know this is a terrible exchange, but it is a very efficient way to keep airline miles from expiring (and I don’t put much value on 2,000 Radisson Rewards Points). I then went even further down the rabbit hole and looked at other hotel programs (Hilton, Hyatt, IHG, Marriott, and Wyndham) to see if they offered better value in terms of resetting airline mile expiration dates than Radisson Rewards. Here are my results…
To get started with the conversion of Radisson Rewards Points into airline miles, I started here. As you can see, 2,000 Radisson Rewards Points = 200 airline miles. The transfer ratio is the same regardless of how many Radisson Rewards Points you want to transfer. 10 Radisson Rewards Points = 1 airline mile. According to Frequent Miler’s Reasonable Redemption Values (RRV), 1 Radisson Reward Point is equal to 0.38 cents per point (CPP), which would make 1 airline mile worth 3.8 CPP (which is unrealistically high). But look at it a different way. 2,000 Radisson Rewards Points would be worth $7.60 (2,000 x $0.0038 = $7.60). In reality, I get 40,000 Radisson Rewards Points every year when I pay the $60 annual fee on my US Bank Radisson Rewards Business Credit Card, so that comes out to a 0.15 CPP value ($60 / 40,000 = $0.0015). The new calculation would make 2,000 Radisson Rewards Points worth only $3.00 (2,000 x $0.0015 = $3.00). So would you redeem $3.00 in Radisson Rewards Points to reset your frequent flyer miles expiration date?
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