Hotel chains and airlines often seen out targeted surveys to their loyalty members as a way of doing market research. IHG recently sent out such a survey (title of the e-mail was “Earn 2,500 Bonus Points by Sharing Your Opinion”). Unfortunately this was targeted, so if you didn’t receive it you won’t be able to get the points.
I always like doing these surveys, the free points are nice but I like to see what questions they are asking to try and get a feel for the direction the brand is thinking about taking. Thankfully a reader (Parkerthon) was kind enough to mail over a screen shot of the opening question:
It looks like they are considering offering multiple versions of the Chase IHG credit card. The key differences seem to be the sign up bonus, annual fee and the free night certificate they offer. I like the idea of being able to get 20% of points refunded, but an annual fee of $129 seems quite steep. I also hate that they are toying with the annual free night certificate being tied to $10,000 in spend, given that the card only earns 1x point on non category bonus spend there is no way I’d be reaching that.
Parkerthon said that they were about 20 different questions in total. The most interesting being what his thoughts would be on being able to transfer IHG points to airline miles at a 1:1 transfer rate. If they combined this with the 100,000 point sign up bonus above (or even the current 70,000/80,000 bonus), I think they would receive a lot of new applicants.
Typically none of the stuff asked in these surveys eventuates, so don’t get too excited for the airline mile transfer option or too depressed about the changes to the free night certificate. Chances are neither will happen in the short or long term, but we can always hope for the best plus speculation is fun! Thanks again to Parkerthon for letting me know about this, if there is something you think I should cover then just contact me.
