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Lots more info on IHG’s ‘Into The Nights’ promotion

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UPDATE – APRIL 2024:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.  We produce a monthly summary of the top hotel bonus point offers – please click HERE or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ menu above.

Click here for our article on IHG’s ‘2000 Bonus Points’ promotion which runs from 1st April to 31st May 2024. You can register for the offer by clicking here.

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The new IHG Rewards Club (Holiday Inn, InterContinental etc) promotion “Into The Nights” caused a lot of interest yesterday.  You can read my main article here.

I wanted to add three new pieces of information which have emerged over the last 24 hours.

‘Free Night Vouchers’ seem to be valid for one year

One caveat I had in my article yesterday was that IHG had not revealed the terms of the free night vouchers.  I speculated that they would be the same as the vouchers that come with the UK credit card – ie:

  • Valid for 12 months from the date they are deposited in your account
  • Valid for any hotel room at any brand which is showing as bookable for points
  • Bookable online

Two American sites are stating that they have been told that the same terms will apply to these free night vouchers.  It is worth noting that one person got their information from the IHG call centre which is not necessarily worth much.  The other claimed it was from ‘an IHG contact’ – make of that what you will.

However, I am willing to give IHG the benefit of the doubt now and assume that the vouchers will be valid at all properties.

This sets up some exceptional deals.  If you are planning a trip to Sydney, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Boston, New York, Washington etc in the next 12 months – all places with very nice, very plush, very expensive InterContinental hotels – you should be seriously looking at “Into The Nights“.

Don’t forget your other half

If you usually travel with a partner, get them signed up.  They will have a super-easy target as I outline in the next section.

Here is a word of warning.  Actually, a few words of warning:

Do NOT open accounts in the names of other people who will not be travelling with you.  In the UK, hotels are very lax about comparing the name of the person on the booking to the name of the person turns up.  This is NOT the case in most countries.  Even if you are named as a second guest, you will have serious trouble in a lot of countries if you redeem a free night voucher in the name of someone else and then arrive yourself.

(I found this out myself in Spain last year when, trying to hit my Mum’s ‘Big Win’ target, I had serious difficulty checking into a Holiday Inn Express even though I was named as the 2nd guest.  And, of course, I share a surname with my Mum.)

Do NOT open multiple IHG accounts in your own name.  IHG is frighteningly good at spotting duplicate accounts.  If any bits of personal data match up, even down to the credit cards you use to pay for your stays, they will spot it and they will close your account.  This has happened to me, albeit at least five years ago.

Do NOT get too carried away with the value of the free nights.  You can book the InterContinental Bora Bora using these free night vouchers, where a basic room costs over $1,000 per night.  However, no room in the IHG system costs more than 50,000 points per night and you can buy 50,000 points for $350 if you know how.  The maximum value of your two free nights is therefore capped at $700 (£428).

There is a very generous offer for new IHG Rewards Club members

If you sign up for IHG Rewards Club as a new member – the link is here – it is highly likely that your ‘Into The Nights’ offer will look like this:

  • 500 points for downloading the IHG app
  • 1,000 points for staying 3 nights
  • 1,000 points for booking 2 stays with the IHG website or app
  • 1,000 points for staying 2 Saturday nights
  • 1,000 points for staying at 2 Holiday Inn hotels
  • Bonus of 50,000 points or 2 free nights for completing all 5 tasks

This means that you can earn 2 free nights (worth £428 if you are smart) plus 4,500 additional points plus the base points for the stays just for booking:

  • 1 x Holiday Inn hotel for a Saturday night, and
  • 1 x different Holiday Inn hotel for a Fri/Sat or Sat/Sun night

That is it.  The total cost could be as low as £150 depending on where you live.

A Holiday Inn Express is not a Holiday Inn

This came up a couple of times yesterday in the comments.  For the purposes of this promotion, Holiday Inn Express and Holiday Inn are different brands.  If you need to do two Holiday Inn stays, you cannot book a Holiday Inn Express (and vice versa).

Be careful on what is a qualifying rate

Stays will only count for this promotion if the rate is ‘qualifying’.  ANY rate which shows on the IHG website without entering any special codes will be OK.

However:

  • Reward nights do not count
  • ‘Cash and points’ rates do not count
  • Any corporate discount or other promotion which takes your room price to less than 70% of the Best Flexible Rate for the same night will potentially be non-qualifying
  • ‘Friends & Family’ rates do not count
  • Rooms booked on Ambassador 2-4-1 voucher should technically give you one qualifying night.  Some hotels post it as two but you should only get one.  If you get none, complain.

For safety, if using a discount code, take a screenshot of the last page in the booking process which states “You will earn x,xxxx IHG Rewards Club points from this stay”.  You can fall back on this as proof that you thought the rate was a qualifying one in case of any issues.

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.

Category

IHG One Rewards

Comments (99)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • Simon says:
    6 Sep6 September 07:08

    Any idea if existing bookings that fall before the end of the year count?

  • Alastair says:
    6 Sep6 September 07:28

    How long should it take for completed offers to register on the site? I downloaded and logged in to the app yesterday, but it is not showing.

    • Rob says:
      6 Sep6 September 07:57

      With Big Win it took ages, even stays posted a week after the normal points

    • World Traveller says:
      6 Sep6 September 13:53

      You need to download and sign in to the IHG App and book a stay on the app to receive the 500 points.

    • World Traveller says:
      6 Sep6 September 13:58

      I’ve just had a read of the T&Cs for the task – points will only be awarded once the stay has been completed:

      Bonus points or bonus miles listed above will be rewarded after downloading the IHG App and Staying the number of qualifying Stays required are booked on the IHG App 1 September 2014 and 31 December 2014 ( (both dates inclusive) (“Registration”) at participating InterContinental®, Crowne Plaza®, Hotel Indigo®, Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites®, Candlewood Suites®, EVENTM or HUALUXE TM hotels worldwide.

  • Alan says:
    6 Sep6 September 07:33

    Sensible points, Rob – sadly still a rubbish offer for those of us with totally unachievable targets despite minimal IHG stays – another win for their IT! Agree if you have easy targets then it’s worth it, although when valuing the free rooms I think it needs to be like flight redemptions – what would you be actually be willing to pay? If you’d never pay over say £150 a night then don’t value them too much over that otherwise you could end up paying a lot more for the free nights than you intend.

  • Kris says:
    6 Sep6 September 07:45

    This new member has zero offers! Lame

    • Russell G says:
      6 Sep6 September 09:43

      Yep, same here (I’ve been a member since 2005 but haven’t done anything on the account for 7 years) and same for the wife who I just signed up to IHG. 0 offers available although at the bottom it says 0 of 1 offers completed. Looks like a SNAFU at IHG IT department. :-/

      • Fenny says:
        6 Sep6 September 10:31

        I was wondering whether it was because I didn’t do anything with the Big Win. But I had about a month timescale to complete them when I was barely moving due to back problems, so definitely not likely to be traveling at all.

  • CV says:
    6 Sep6 September 07:52

    Last night IHG emailed me my offer, the headline stated ‘2 free nights or 60,700 points’ (that being the sum of the points offered in my deal). However in the breakdown of the offer it stated ‘17,000 points or 2 free nights’. 2 free nights is a much better deal than taking 17,000 points, I wonder if they have made a mistake.

    • Head for Points says:
      6 Sep6 September 08:24

      Don’t think so, it isn’t much different from ’25k or 2 nights’ that I have on one account.

      Some people may still want the points – the points never expire (the voucher will be 12 months validity we think) and if you book PointBreaks then 17k goes further than 2 nights.

      • Mycity says:
        6 Sep6 September 08:42

        Hi I can’t see how to get the bonus points with breakfast working. I go through the link I can see the bonus points however it won’t let me book both. Ie if I tick bonus points breakfast disappears and if I tick add breakfast the bonus points disappear. AM I missing something?

        • Simon says:
          6 Sep6 September 10:21

          I’ve not made a lot of IHG bookings but I think not all brands / hotels offer the breakfast and bonus points package, InterContinental Berlin definitely has a 1000 Bonus Points per day & Breakfast package.

        • Rob says:
          6 Sep6 September 10:24

          Yes. Some hotels have a special package called Bonus Points With Breakfast. You need to find one of those hotels.

          • Ck says:
            9 Sep9 September 13:26

            Which hotels in uk have the bonus points with breakfast?

          • Chrism says:
            9 Sep9 September 13:29

            If you go onto the IHG website and select offers (up beside the reservations tab), select hotel offers and then select bonus points packages. This then takes you to another page and there is a drop down option with points and breakfast

  • Kipto says:
    6 Sep6 September 08:47

    If there is a cap on the spend with the vouchers at $700 for two nights,what would happen if for example you saw the rooms you wanted at a higher price than that ? Would you not be able to book it as I have seen some rooms priced at $600 or more at certain hotels but also redeemable for 50000 points ?

    • Rob says:
      6 Sep6 September 10:23

      There is no cap. What I meant is that you can buy 100,000 points for £428 so you cannot value the 2 free nights higher.

  • Redfox78 says:
    6 Sep6 September 08:59

    This promotion has totally disincentived me. Currently a platinum member with 14 nights across 5 brands for the year to date.
    My Into the night promo is:
    18,000 stay 14 nights
    31,200 stay 5 brands
    7,200 2 saturday stays
    10,800 book 5 stays via app
    12,000 2 stays including a Friday
    1,500 book and stay using IHG credit card.
    Complete 5 and get 31,000 or 3 free nights.

    14 nights in 3 months is huge given my stay profile this year, 2 saturdays and 2 Fridays is highly unlikely and I don’t even have an IHG credit card to use for the 1,500 points and you can not apply for one at this time!
    Don’t get me wrong I will pick up a few bonus points this quarter but there is next to zero chance I will get to benefit from the 3 free nights.

  • Elaine says:
    6 Sep6 September 09:09

    My promotion looks fine until I look at the Terms for each individual component. They seem to think I live in China not the UK. For example, for the Book with IHG using the IHG App component there is, hidden in the Terms, a list of participating hotels for this component. The only hotels listed are 19 hotels in China. Some of my other components have similar lists.

    Wonder how many people will check the individual Terms. That could cause several stays to be invalid if they have lists like mine hidden there but had only checked the overall Terms and assumed booking of any hotel would be OK.

    I might have participated in this promo this time round as my offer is not that high, until I examined the impossible Terms. Count me out now unless it turns out to be an error.

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