IHG Rewards Club, the loyalty scheme covering InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza etc, has launched its new Spring promotion.
It is fundamentally another version of the long-running Accelerate offer, although this time it is called “Reward Nights. Faster.”
You can find out your targets, and register, on the IHG website here.
It is valid for stays between 15th January and 30th April. The closing date for registration is 15th March – this is the first time I can remember that IHG has closed registrations early.
Once I had registered, I got the following targets:
10,000 bonus points for staying five nights
19,200 bonus points for staying at three different IHG brands
5,600 bonus points for 2 x 2-night weekend stays (Saturday plus another night)
8,000 bonus points for four stays booked on the corporate rate of the company I haven’t worked for since 2011, and which has special rates at very few properties anyway ….
3,000 bonus points for one stay in February
42,800 bonus points for completing four of the five targets above
This is fairly useless to me, frankly. It is virtually impossible to hit the weekends target and I can’t see any scenario under which I could hit the ‘corporate rate’ target.
The 19,200 points bonus for staying at three different brands is an interesting one, however. If I value an IHG point at 0.4p then I’m getting almost £80 of points back from those three stays – plus my standard points and the 3,000 points for a February stay – which is a good deal.
Realistically, I might be able to achieve 32,200 bonus points. This would involve staying five nights over the next four months, taking in three different brands and ensuring one stay is in February.
My wife got the following targets:
10,000 bonus points for staying five nights
28,800 bonus points for staying at three different IHG brands
8,400 bonus points for two Holiday Inn stays
10,800 bonus points for 3 x 2-night weekend stays (Saturday plus another night)
6,600 bonus points for booking two ‘Bonus Point Packages’ (this is when the reservation system offers you additional points on your stay in return for paying a slightly higher rate)
This is VERY interesting:
she could earn 35,400 bonus points from just three nights, as long as each was at a different brand and two were ‘Bonus Point Packages’
she could earn 58,000 bonus points (worth £232 based on my 0.4p valuation) from just five nights, as long as they included two Holiday Inn nights, three different brands in total and two of the bookings were for ‘Bonus Point Packages’
Conclusion
The new IHG Rewards Club promotion is, at least in my house, surprisingly generous.
We don’t know what Marriott Rewards will do when MegaBonus ends on 31st January (MegaBonus details are here). However, IHG’s ‘Rewards Nights. Faster.’ offer is looking a lot more generous for us (your position may be different) than Hilton’s new ‘2,000 bonus points per stay’ offer which I wrote about here.
I strongly recommend signing up now, especially as IHG is closing registrations early on 15th March, even though stays until 30th April count. Remember that only stays from 15th January count – existing bookings are OK and do not need to be rebooked.
You can register for the new IHG promotion here.
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