IHG have announced their Rewards Club 2017 Point Changes. A full list of the changes can be found here. These changes go into effect on January 15th, 2017. Existing bookings are not affected, so it’s worth going through the list and pre booking any properties you plan to stay at that will be increasing in price before they do. Keep in mind that point bookings are also refundable, so it might even make sense to make speculative bookings.
Hat tip to adp5x7 on /r/churning
I believe IHG intentionally forces itself into these devals by virtue of the massive amount of points that they give away for next to nothing. The envelope promo, along with their quarterly gamified promos which often can net around 40k points for staying 1 or 2 nights at a cheap place leads to this sort of thing. Of course, the genuinely loyal IHG members seldom get good offers on the quarterly promos…
Here’s the information in a sortable format: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxsTEPUS3lEqTHUzbjhRMkZjRU0/view?usp=sharing
Basically a lot of the good value suburban IHGs, which were decent deals at 15,000 or 20,000, are now 10,000 points higher and are bad deals unless you go during a convention or other special event when room prices citywide for quality hotels are in the $200+ range.
Thanks, Cal!
any tips on how to keep points from expiring? I dont have IHG cc and dont have plans to stay at any in near future. thanks!
The points changes in my area are bad enough that I will never again hit up the ones that changed. I saw at least three that I would have stayed at sort of local to me jumped 15k a piece! Yeah, no way. I will either pay or stay at non IHG properties in that area now.
@Abey. Maybe the priceless promotion caused the point creep!! 🙁
As long as they don’t mess with PointBreaks I couldn’t care less, but dang they gutted any remaining sweet-spots in the US.
Its good that the free night with the credit card doesnt have a category and you can select any.
By the way when are they having again that priceless promotion with the envelopes
It worked out well last time 🙂
Haha, I don’t think they will do that priceless promotion again. Would have cost them way too much money.
The Kailua-Kona Holiday Inn has gone up again and it’s now at 40k. Damn.