A sneaky 50% IHG Rewards Club price rise is hopefully not a new trend

I wrote a few weeks ago about how the new InterContinental at the O2 had been reduced in price from 50,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night to 45,000.

I thought this was rebalancing – the hotel had just opened, its initial rate forecasts were too optimistic and so cash and reward prices had come down.  Fair enough.

This may be a disturbing trend though.  A reader contacted me yesterday to point out that the InterContinental Koh Samui (officially InterContinental Samui Baan Taling Ngam Resort) had gone up overnight from 35,000 points to 50,000 points.

This sort of behaviour is not acceptable.  You cannot increase the reward points needed for a hotel by almost 50% with no notice especially one which is an ‘aspirational’ redemption.

IHG needs to understand that this sort of behaviour can backfire.  If we no longer trust IHG to keep reward prices steady from one day to the next, the logical thing to do is make lots of speculative bookings ‘just in case’ at places we might want to go.  After all, cancellation is free and instant.

This would make life hard for the hotels, who cannot accurately track forward bookings when they come and go so quickly.  It would also be hard for other IHG Rewards Club members who cannot book they really need because someone else made a speculative booking ‘just in case’ the price went up overnight.

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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.