Welcome to an odd occasion.
This summer’s promotion is called “The Great Race to Rewards”. In a nutshell, Caesars is willing to give you credits if you visit their casinos in different parts of the country. If you visit three of their casinos, they will give you 15,000 reward credits. Total Rewards credits are valued at .01 each, so for visiting three casinos, you get $150 in credit. If you visit a fourth casino, they’ll give you another $150. Same for the fifth, and same for the sixth. So the maximum benefit of the program is that if you visit six of their casinos, they will give you $600 in Total Rewards Credits. What do you do with Total Rewards Credits? In Las Vegas, pretty much anything you like. Shows, food, drinks or shopping are all eligible. In simple terms, anything you can charge to your room, you can pay for with Total Rewards Credits. You can even pay for the room itself with them. In general, I’d say $600 should cover your room and food bill for a 3 or 4 night stay at Harrahs in Las Vegas. If you’re more high end than that, get your significant other to do the promotion with you and you’ll have $1200 to spend.
The drawbacks? Well they’ve learned from some of their past mistakes, and casinos in the same area as each other only count as one, so you can only check in at one of the Vegas casinos instead of all 8. You do have to earn 1 point at each casino, which is the equivalent of playing $5 through a slot machine. There’s also the fact that playing lightly at a Caesars casino (say running $5 through to get the one point) will negatively affect your offers, but if you’re not getting offers from Caesars right now then there’s nothing to lose. Finally, the reward credits aren’t supposed to be awarded until the end of October, and the credits will expire if you have no activity on your card for a period of six months. The biggest concern however, is how long will this promotion last? Caesars has pulled promotions before once word got out and there were too many people cashing in. The way they’ve got it set up seems like a highway to abuse. With the only requirement being to earn a point, people could easily mail their cards around the country and have friends and relatives earn the points for them. There should probably at least be a requirement to stop in at the Total Rewards booth in each casino to show some ID.
It’s the uncertainty of the promotion lasting until October 3 that is my biggest worry, but I’m going to start chasing this deal anyways. Lori and I are going to be close to at least four of the casinos that qualify in the next two weeks, so hopefully we can get $300 each banked before anything gets shut down. If it works, it should make for a nice free vacation in Las Vegas down the line. If not, well hopefully Lady Luck will be on my side while I earn the points.
