How I finally got the IHG Rewards Club ‘5000 points for a weekend stay’ bonus to post

IHG Rewards Club (the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental etc programme) is well known for publishing lots of one-off bonus codes which can really add up.  This article shows how I got 12,000 points from a recent £55 Holiday Inn Express stay, which is nearly enough for another free night.  This post lists the most recent codes released.

For years, though, one bonus has escaped me!

IHG Rewards Club has always run a ‘5000 points for a weekend stay’ bonus.  In theory, to trigger this bonus, you simply need to do a Friday and Saturday, or Saturday and Sunday, stay at any of their properties.

I have never managed to get this bonus to post, though.

I have, now, cracked it.  It seems that the bonus is only valid for members with a US mailing address.

So, after I checked out of the InterContinental in Dusseldorf recently, I changed the ‘country’ on my account to ‘United States’.  (I didn’t do this before the stay to avoid any confusion at check-in.)

The points for the stay posted as expected, on time, 5 days after check-out.  The 5,000 point weekend stay bonus was not there.

However, a few weeks later, the 5,000 points arrived!

They posted at exactly the same time as the 10% points rebate I get on my redemptions stays via my IHG Rewards Club Ambassador membership.  (When you renew, you can pay $200 instead of $150 and get 5000 extra IHG points plus a 10% rebate on all your reward stays for the following year.  The maths works for me.)  This implies that the ‘weekend stay’ bonus is posted centrally as part of a (monthly?) sweep of other bonuses.

If you have a 2-night (or more) stay coming up over a weekend, you should register for this promotion and change your account address after the stay.  You can register for this promotion at this webpage.  The code you need is 7637, but if that fails try 5130 or 3136.  You need to stay within 90 days of registering.

The only thing I don’t know is when you should change your account address back.  Is it good enough to change it back as soon as the base points for the stay post, after five days?  Or should you keep it at a USA address until the 5,000 points post?

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IHG One Rewards update – April 2024:

Get bonus points: IHG One Rewards is offering 2,000 bonus points for every two cash nights you stay (not necessarily consecutive) between 1st April and 31st May 2024. You can read our full article here and you can register here.

New to IHG One Rewards?  Read our overview of IHG One Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG One Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG One Rewards points, you can buy them here.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.