Radisson hotel points – new insights into how to get 50% more value than you think
Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission. See here for all partner links.
When Radisson Rewards undertook its points massacre in October 2022, slashing the value of unused points by 2/3rds with no notice, we said that the average value was now 0.2p.
Over time, this actually got worse. On all of my recent redemptions I have been getting 0.15p per point.
I’ve now been able to get a bit more insight into how it works, and I have worked out a way of getting 0.22p per point – a 50% improvement.

Radisson Rewards no longer has ‘reward nights’. Your points can only be used to get a discount on your next cash booking.
What I had been doing is what most people now do. I would earn a small number of Radisson points on one stay and instantly spend them for £1-£2 off my next stay, always at around 0.15p per point. My balance never got higher than a couple of thousand points.
However …. when we covered the Radisson Rewards VIP status match I put my refer a friend link in the article so that new joiners could get 5,000 bonus points. This meant I also got some points and, for the first time, I could experiment with valuations. What I found was interesting.
Radisson Rewards does NOT offer a fixed value per point
It turns out that Radisson Rewards is not working in the same way as Accor Live Limitless. The value you get per point is not fixed.
Here are the key things to take from this article:
- the value per point is based on the percentage of the room bill you pay with points
- the higher the percentage of the room bill you pay with points, the higher the ‘pence per point’ rate you get
- the number of points used does not matter – what matters is the % of the bill you pay. 100,000 points used to settle 1/3rd of a £500 booking are worth less than 100,000 points used to pay for a room in full.
Here are some examples. With my modest points balance from reader referrals, I found a £38.26 night at a budget Park Inn hotel that I could afford to book entirely with points.
When you pay 100% of the room rate with points:
Using 16,980 points for a totally free room costing £38.26, I got 0.22p per point. This is 50% higher than our standard valuation of 0.15p.
When you use 70% of the points needed for a free night:
Using 12,059 points (71% of the points cost of a free night) I could reduce the cost by £23.50 (61% of the total cost). I got 0.19p per point.
When you use 50% of the points needed for a free night:
Using 8,495 points (50% of the points cost of a free night) I could reduce the cost by £15.08 (39% of the total cost). I got 0.17p per point.
When you use 25% of the points needed for a free night:
Using 4,253 points (25% of the points cost of a free night) I could reduce the cost by £6.83 (17% of the total cost). I got 0.16p per point.
What does this mean?
As you can see, you get a better ‘pence per point’ rate when you pay a higher percentage of the room rate with points.
To prove that the key issue is the % of room rate paid and NOT the number of points that impacts ‘pence per point’, I looked at a more expensive hotel.
In my original example above, I used 16,980 points to get a £38.26 room for free. By paying 100% of the cost in points, I got 0.22p per point.
Now look at this:
This is a more expensive hotel. Using 17,046 points – the nearest I could get to 16,980 from the previous example – I only have enough to get a 20% discount (£27.67) on my room rate. This is 0.16p per point.
(Ignore the 28,403 points number shown above. This was my points balance at the time I did the test. It isn’t the amount needed for a free night at this hotel.)
With my 17,000 points, I got 0.22p per point when using them to pay for 100% of a cheap hotel room but only 0.16p per point when I used them to get 20% off a more expensive room.
How should you best use your Radisson Rewards points?
This leads us to an interesting conclusion:
- you do NOT maximise the value of your Radisson Rewards points by using them immediately for a £1-£2 discount on your next stay – this will only get you 0.15p per point
- you do NOT maximise the value of your Radisson Rewards points by saving them up for a partial discount on an expensive stay – this could still get you as little as 0.15p per point and probably only 0.16p to 0.17p
- instead, you maximise the value by building them up until you have enough to redeem for a completely free night, irrespective of how cheap or expensive the hotel is – this can get you around 0.22p based on our examples, so a 50% uplift on the worse case scenario
The snag here, of course, is that most HfP readers would rather use 25,000 Radisson Rewards points for £37.50 off a decent £200 hotel room (0.15p per point) rather than get a dodgier £55 hotel room for free (0.22p per point).
However, at least you now understand where the valuations come from.
PS. Since the Radisson Rewards devaluation, transferring American Express Membership Rewards points to Radisson has been a bad deal, even at the 1:3 transfer rate. However, now that we know how the sliding scale of valuations works, you may want to look at doing a top-up.
Go back to my examples above:
- 16,980 Radisson points got me a £38.26 hotel room for free
- 12,059 Radisson points got me £23.50 off the same hotel room, with £14.76 to pay in cash
If I had 12,059 Radisson Rewards points in my account I could transfer 1,640 American Express Membership Rewards points to Radisson, taking my balance to 16,980 points. I would get £14.76 of extra value for my 1,640 American Express points because the room would now be totally free. This is 0.9p per Membership Rewards point, which isn’t bad.
PS. If you are reading this but are not a regular Head for Points visitor, why not sign up for our FREE weekly or daily newsletters? They are full of the latest Avios, airline, hotel and credit card points news and deals to improve how you travel. To sign up, visit this page of the site or click any of the ‘Subscribe’ links on this page. Thank you.

How to earn Radisson Rewards points and status from UK credit cards (February 2025)
Radisson Rewards does not have a dedicated UK credit card. However, you can earn Radisson Rewards points by converting Membership Rewards points earned from selected UK American Express cards.
These cards earn Membership Rewards points:
- American Express Preferred Rewards Gold (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 20,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 60,000 Radisson Rewards points. This card is FREE for your first year and also comes with four free airport lounge passes.
- The Platinum Card from American Express (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 50,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 150,000 Radisson Rewards points
- American Express Rewards credit card (review here, apply here) – sign-up bonus of 10,000 Membership Rewards points converts into 30,000 Radisson Rewards points. This card is FREE for life.
Membership Rewards points convert at 1:3 into Radisson Rewards points which is a very attractive rate. The cards above all earn 1 Membership Rewards point per £1 spent on your card, which converts to 3 Radisson Rewards points.
Even better, holders of The Platinum Card receive free Radisson Rewards Premium status for as long as they hold the card. It also comes with Hilton Honors Gold, Marriott Bonvoy Gold and MeliaRewards Gold status.
We reviewed American Express Platinum in detail here. You can apply here.
Got a small business?
You can get free top-tier Radisson Rewards VIP status with the new Capital on Tap Pro Visa credit card for small business. Clck here to apply.

Capital on Tap Pro Visa
10,500 points (=10,500 Avios) plus good benefits Read our full review
Comments (19)