The Ritz-Carlton Three Free Nights Offer is Dead

Although the three free nights offer for the Ritz-Carlton Rewards Card unofficially expired a few months ago there were still a couple of links that still took applicants to the landing page of the offer. As shown below, the offer states to request your card by November 30, 2016 but in practice many had success with obtaining the three free nights well after this deadline. 

The deal is dead 

Now it appears that the offer is dead as the link to the application will now take you to a screen that says “Offer Unavailable.”

This blows as the offer now is back to the free two nights offer.

If you’re not familiar, the sign-up bonus for the Ritz-Carlton Rewards Card normally offers two free nights at a Tier 1 through 4 Ritz-Carlton property after you spend $5,000 within the first three months of opening your account. The highest tier for Ritz-Carlton properties is Tier 5 and you’ll find some of the most valuable properties in that category, such as the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong and Ritz-Carlton New York, Central Park. But even some Tier 4 properties can be very expensive like the Ritz-Carlton New York, BatterY Park, which can be around $1,000 a night!

Is this offer still worth it?

The current two free nights offer is not a horrible offer, but losing one additional free night at the Ritz-Carlton is like losing an additional $500 or more in value, so it’s a big loss.

But the card still has a ton of value. In addition to the free two nights, it also offers a number of other benefits you might want to consider, such as:

• Priority Pass
• $300 travel credit  (explained how to use here)
• $100 credit at Ritz-Carlton properties on paid stays
• Upgrade your stay to club level three times annually on paid stays of up to seven nights.
• Access to visadiscountair.com/ritzcarltoncard, where you can save $100 on the total cost of between 2 and 5 qualifying round-trip, domestic coach airline tickets purchased on the same itinerary. (You can use this promo as many times as you’d like.)
• Marriott/Ritz-Carlton Gold status for the first year and for ensuing years after you spend $10,000 or more on the card. You can also reach Platinum status by spending $75,000 in one year! 

If you can properly utilize the $300 travel credit, you’re already looking at an effective annual fee of $150. Just by using the Visa Infinite discount on airfare one time, you can knock your annual fee down to $50, which in my book is well worth the fee considering the other benefits you’ll receive. But, as with all travel credits, it all depends on how you’d normally spend your money without having this card to see what kind of value you’re truly getting from the card.

I’m hoping that Chase does away with the two free night certificates soon and returns with a big points sign-up bonus because then you can use those points to stay at some of the Tier 5 properties.