The Offer
- Chase Ultimate Rewards program is offering a 80% transfer bonus when you transfer to IHG. Normally you can transfer at a rate of 1:1 and under this promotion that increases to 1:1.8
The Fine Print
- Valid until April 30, 2025
Our Verdict
Not worth considering as you can frequently purchase IHG points for 0.5¢ per point. You can see a full list of transfer bonuses by clicking here.
I used 32k points for a hotel in Kyoto during cherry blossom season, where cash price is over $300 pn+25% tax n fees (wow Japanese hotel has high tax &fees!) maybe overseas redemption gives you better value?
No, I don’t think it’s universally overseas.
IHG doesn’t price their hotels directly to the cash rates. We don’t know what the exact formula is.
And could it be perhaps that IHG’s points pricing doesn’t include peak attendance events?
Did you check what the price and points cost was for just outside the cherry blossom season?
I don’t remember whether I specifically checked IHG back then, but I found several hotel programs back during the 2017 eclipse in North America that were not pricing points redemption for peak eclipse viewing dates even though the cash price was very high.
My renewal just hit for my Select and Im going to drop the card. It was my first Chase card. Annual free rooms are almost impossible to use, even booked far in advance.
I am closing my ihg select $49 annual fee. This program isn’t working for me
How about making my lovely wife an AU, we’ll pay the AF and keep the FNC and you keep the credit limit and the age for the trade line?
😉
How lovely?
One of my great joys in my life is looking at her lovely face.
Aww, how wholesome.
The IHG Select card is a joke now. I just had a FNC expire because it couldn’t be redeemed at any average hotel. Only at crappy hotels in the middle of nowhere.
Call them and tell them you cant use it. They gave me a 20k point good faith award. I asked if that was the best they could do, so she said I can only go as high as 25K. Better than nothing.
I’m never going to cancel my card. Getting a tremendous value every year for my free annual hotel stay!
Thanks! I needed to book a room where Hyatt didn’t exist. This made for a good deal on an IHG hotel.
I’m guessing Priceline would have been better.
with most $100 standard room costing 80000 point or more many times, this is no deal !
It depends where you’re going, and which exact hotel you’re looking at, on which exact date.
The points price is not necessarily related to that day’s cash price in the ratio that you claimed.
For example, in the greater vicinity of LAX airport tonight there is a hotel right near LAX costing $156 that is 23000 points and another costing $137 that is 29000 points, a hotel in Hermosa Beach costing $189 that is 32000 points, an expensive hotel at Santa Monica beach costing $1410 that is 184000 points, and a hotel in Beverly Hills costing $330 that is 44000 points.
As you can see, the hotel near LAX that costs less in cash costs more in points, and the hotel near LAX that costs more in cash costs less in points.
And in just that one example, it proves that IHG rates are not strictly related to cash cost.
So it’s not a fixed cash-to-points ratio. I don’t know exactly how IHG sets points rates, but while it may vary slightly as the cash rate goes up and down, that doesn’t mean that’s the only factor in determining the points rate.
Every hotel program determines points rates differently. For example, Marriott has long set points rates predominantly based on how many people redeemed points at that hotel in recent times, and that was the only factor in fact until they added a secondary, relatively minor factor, based on cash rates, which just produces relatively minor variation in the points redemption rate from night to night.
So you can’t make any assumption about points rates just by looking at a few hotels in one area on one date, because there may be something special about that area on that date that causes a different ratio to apply there. At Marriott, redemption rates would tend to be the highest at those high-demand locations where people redeem points the most. But I don’t know how it’s determined at IHG exactly, and I don’t know if anyone outside of IHG really knows.
Was this AI, or did you take the time to draft that many paragraphs for us? Either way, thank you. It shows that you care.
No, it wasn’t AI.
I’d been staying at hotel programs for a couple dozen years due to far-from-home work, and I’ve been keeping up with things about hotel programs on the travel programs discussion site FlyerTalk for at least a couple decades.
And now I’m temporarily unemployed (though getting along fine, among other things due to a high severance package), and planning to officially retire with Social Security in a year or two, so I have plenty of time to write up things when I know them.
And, for the record, I don’t trust AI much except for certain specialized situations.
AI had given some ridiculous travel recommendations (for example, it based stuff on which restaurants had the high highest visitation, not based on whether it was by travelers or just by locals, for example, and not based on whether those restaurants were rated well or rated poorly).
And very recently, I saw on local news that AI has recommended cooking dishes that made zero sense, ones which most people not only wouldn’t cook but wouldn’t even want to eat.
General purpose AI learns from publicly available documents, and if those are not sorted out very cleanly, that includes a lot of disinformation floating around. And much of AI can’t easily tell disinformation from correct information.
That is utter nonsense.
Please give us a screenshot of at least two rooms like that.
Just saying something doesn’t make it real.
JUNK FEE WARNING
IHG has hidden junk fees on award nights. See Hotel Indigo Atlanta Midtown as an example. The “historical preservation fee” (lmao) is shown upfront on a cash quote. As soon as you change to points, it’s gone. I even got this reservation confirmation
1 reward night: 18,000 pts
Historical preservation fee (mentioned, but no cost associated)
Total for stay: 18,000 pts
Guess what, I woke up to a folio with the fee. I showed the front desk my IHG app showing the above. He said the fee is buried under additional charges. Not only would that be improper, he and I looked at the additional charges page together, and it just lists pets and parking (neither of which I had). He removed the fee with a firm huff that next time it applies.
It so happens that I burned all my IHG points on that stay. So I closed my IHG account and vow never to stay at another IHG property. Let me remind you all the junk fee was called a HISTORICAL PRESERVATION FEE like wtf does that even mean
Might be the equivalent of a resort fee, which hotels are renaming in increasingly absurd ways. Or it might be a local tax, as I see other hotels in Atlanta list the same fee. In any case, if it wasn’t listed in your reservation, then you shouldn’t have to pay it.
However, I don’t see the benefit of closing your account. This kind of nonsense happens all the time in the points and miles world; better to learn how to navigate it then cut yourself off from future opportunities.
The closure of my account is a vote of no confidence in the IHG rewards program which allows properties to charge a resort fee. Hilton and Hyatt do not allow them and frankly Hilton and Hyatt hotels have better brand standards in any case. The Hotel Indigo I stayed at had a dirty duvet and an iron where the holes were clogged with calcium deposits.
Marriott also charges a resort fee on points bookings.
The Hilton I just stayed at this past weekend had a dirty duvet and an iron where the holes were clogged with calcium not to mention a big black stain that could have ruined my clothes. Guess I will just vow to never stay with them again.
Never had this happen at a HIEx. Only gripe is the stale “omelets.”
Their cinnamon buns and oatmeal is where I’m at.
I like their buns, too.