Update 01/15/18: Today is the last day to book under the old pricing. Book any properties you’re interested that are increasing in pricing now.
Update: 01/06/18. As per Mommy Points these changes will go live on January 16th, 2018. This means you’ll want to book any properties that are increasing in price on or before January 15th to avoid the price increase. Any properties going down in price you’ll want to wait until on or after January 16th, 2018 to make your bookings.
Once a year IHG announces what properties will be changing award category. The full list of properties changing award category can be found here. In addition they are also adding a new award category that will cost 70,000 points a night. Previously the maximum per night was 60,000 points.
Some statistics:
- 691 properties in total will be changing their award category
- 499 properties are increasing in price
- 192 properties decreasing in price
- 437 properties in the United States are changing category
- 88 are decreasing in price (all by 5,000 points)
- 349 are increasing in price
- 211 by 5,000 points
- 138 by 10,000 points
- Last year 650 properties changed award category
- I suspect these changes will go into effect on or around January 15th, 2018 as they did last year but no official announcement yet
These are some fairly massive changes and this is a significant devaluation. The addition of a new category costing 70,000 points will make properties such as Bora Bora significantly more expensive on points and it looks like most Intercontinental’s in popular locales will fit under the new 70,000 a night category. This also ruins the post I had almost finished on IHG point valuations, but will be interesting to look at the stats pre and post devaluation.
Hat tip to Point Me To The Plane
