Update 1/24/2019: Prices change tomorrow, if there is a property that you’re interested in that is increasing in price remember to book it today to avoid that price rise.
Once a year IHG announces what properties will be changing award category. The full list of properties changing award category can be found here. Last year they also added a new category costing 70,000 points, this year there will be no new maximum category added thankfully.
Some statistics:
- 696 properties in total will be changing their award category
- 570 properties are increasing in price
- 126 properties decreasing in price
- 38 properties no longer eligible for the 40,000 point free night. 1 property now eligible for 40,000 point free night.
- No new properties will cost 70,000 points
- Average property price increases from 24,000 points to 27,180 points
- Last year 691 properties changed award category
The average hotel pricing going up by 3,180 is significant, although the ‘real’ affects could be worse if highly valued award properties were targeted for increases.
Hat tip to lionheart on Flyertalk via OMaaT
IHG sucks. I used to use their program a lot but constant devaluations and point-earning are very hard. I never transfer from Chase to IHG because of such poor value. I don’t know why it isn’t 1:2 transfer rate or something like that.
Dumb question but which hotel card is the best to have at this point. Hyatt??? 5/24 Starwood?
Probably varies depending on which hotels you frequent, but I’m getting the most value out of Hyatt and Hilton (thanks to the Aspire perks).
I am really confused but I was just able to book hubby and my Chase free nights at a prperty that the award night was 55,000. I was surprised it was an option on the drop down on my app—and then it booked and I got a confirmation #????? What am I missing?
You probably still have an old grandfathered award that has no point limit applied. IHG ended up delaying when the new 40,000 point limit went into effect because of the significant uproar that happened when they announced the change. So your next annual free night will likely have the 40,000 point restriction, although your most recent one didn’t.
Hyatt > IHG!! those point redemption values are nuts!!!
IHG really needs a new strategy team. This is exactly the time they should be going in the opposite direction with their loyalty program and trying to pick up the disaffected SPG loyalists while they are in play. Once these members settle on a new program they will become vested with points, status and stays and it will be much harder to dislodge them. If they played their cards right, IHG could have stepped into the SPG role and picked up half of the SPG customer base at nowhere near the cost Marriott paid to acquire them, even if IHG flushed an extra $50 million a year into loyalty generosity it would pick up the customers at a fraction of Marriott’s cost of acquiring the whole company then losing half of the customers.
I have never seen IHG points for purchase @ less than 0.50.
Unless you are employing ‘Book then cancel’ strategy.
4th night free on the new Chase Premier M/card only. I have the IHG Select.
Annual free night now capped @ 40k for both cards.
Looking for a replacement program.
Got an IHG status match with Wyndham.
Not the best outcome but I’ll take what I can.
According to OMAAT, “It looks like IHG has delayed their award price changes to January 25, 2019”
Thanks, let me update
Such a short notice, but then again IHG rewards program is the worst in my experience. I honestly think that if you’re going to spend money on IHG-branded hotels, just go through hotels.com
I love IHG for cheap, boring properties. The point breaks have worked out for me well a couple of times and the accelerate promos and others are sometimes great. If you have higher expectations than that I have no idea why you would stick with them, lol
Do you have a link for the changes to the Free Nights you mention? “38 no longer eligible” and sounds like 1 new one. Thank you
Well the free night required 40k points, so just look for properties that cost 40k or less before and then more than 40k after the changes.
Not a pleasant news for a new year of travel. But I notice that in general hotel prices all over the world has been steadily increasing for last 5-7 years, in some cases very dramatically. So this is the ongoing trend probably because of tourism increase – so is the demand. The big negative is that IHG increase is much higher than the inflation, and the value of the IHG points will decrease 15-25% this year alone. Loyalty is gonna drop fast – just look what happen with Marriott/SPG last 2 years – they are gonna be hurting for the next 5 years minimum.
You have to think that the online marketplace hospitality industry is partly to blame for the increase in prices as well.