IHG uses dynamic pricing for award stays and there is no longer any published award chart. Previously the maximum a property would cost is 120,000 points. That maximum seems to have been lifted with some properties now costing up to 190,000 points (although I’ve seen other states that the maximum might be 250,000 points. It’s unclear if they are seeing that pricing on properties that are resorts and not subject to the previous 120,000 points cap).
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Just like all loyalty programs as of late. Flood the market with obscene points welcome credit card offers and then jack up prices that make those welcome offers useless. Banks collect their annual fees and new credit card holders are forced to spend more than necessary. Same song and dance loyalty program after loyalty program after loyalty program.
It depends where you travel. If you only travel to national/state parks and similar outdoor places, most of the hotels near those aren’t jacking up rates the way they do in many super-high-demand locations.
And it’s not necessarily all loyalty program, just again the high-end ones. Many low-end hotel programs, which are more common in those out-of-the-way locations, haven’t been doing that very much.
The high-end ones may be worth visiting for some people, but that doesn’t mean that all people will find them worth visiting.
Plus as someone who sleeps best with room temperature around 67F, I found that a lot of so-called “luxury” properties are awful for my needs, because they don’t aim the air conditioner anywhere near the bed, while low end properties tend to aim it right at the bed. And for someone who arrives late, often for one night stays, that matters to me.
So my needs save me money and/or points!
And thus it all depends on what you value in hotel properties. Not everyone looks for the same thing at hotel properties.
For another example why different people need different things at hotels, some people traveling with a big family might prefer to cook at the hotel, and they might prefer a “full kitchen” room over anything else. And only certain hotels, including some lower-end ones, like Candlewood Suites and Staybridge Suites at IHG, have that easily available (as in many or even all rooms with it).
So don’t assume that whether you find most valuable in a hotel is the same thing that everyone finds the most valuable at a hotel.
Making it harder and harder to be keep it with in the credit card games. Sucks I started this game late in my life
And if you had listened to those people with those not-well-thought-through advice to “never accumulate rewards points, use them up quickly”, you’d be in the same situation today even if you had started long ago.
That’s why, despite devaluations, I think that if you have a time when you can accumulate a lot of hotel points easily, it makes little sense to use them up “just to use them up”, if you’ll possibly have much better uses for them later, even if they’re not worth quite as much.
Too many people assume all “devaluations” are the same, when they’re nowhere near the same.
For example, in this case, this particular IHG “devaluation” is only affecting some already-high-points-priced IHG properties, not all IHG properties.
“Don’t hoard” is a silly concept to use as a “always” condition.
The only alternative, if you already have lots of points, is to use the points “unnecessarily”, and that is really silly for many people.
And again, you seem to be mistakenly assuming that everyone has the same need in hotels. As I started to explain in another reply above, that’s not true at all.
And if you don’t have the same need to stay at top-end hotels, hotels may not going up in redemption cost the same for you as for someone who prefers to stay at top-end hotels.
So for people not redeeming for top-end hotels, the “don’t hoard” may not apply to the same degree as for people redeeming for top-end hotels.
The hotels that I stay at are not top-end, for reasons I explained above, so they’re not typically going up much in redemption rates, not enough to make “saving” points unwise, when I have no good use for using the points more quickly otherwise.
And for someone who’s unemployed and/or retired, the needs of saving points may be quite different than for someone much younger and/or wonderfully employed, in part because it may be more difficult with low income to earn points, since so many credit cards require a big spend to earn the signup bonus.
Kimpton Seafire Grand Cayman affected?
not so far, for dates I checked
Many people are saying IHG has the most valuable points. Very easy to book those big, beautiful properties.
“People are saying…” (oh no, I know what this is… and will translate: so, it turns out, they aren’t easy to book, and the properties aren’t beautiful…)
And here I was planning to go to on a months-long bender at IHG’s Six Senses properties in the Maldives, the Seychelles, and Fiji, you know, using all my winnings from shorting global markets, which I immediately cashed out then transferred to IHG points, but I guess I’ll have to wait for the next recession in order to redeem them. Darn.
You might not have to wait long….smh.