Maximise your Avios, air miles and hotel points

500 Avios (or 1,500 IHG points) for a two-night IHG stay + 500 free Avios for new members

Links on Head for Points may support the site by paying a commission.  See here for all partner links.

UPDATE – APRIL 2024:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.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.

Keep up to date with new hotel offers by signing up for our free daily or weekly newsletters.

Avios and IHG Rewards Club have joined forces to offer you 500 Avios points for signing up – no stay required. 

500 Avios (or 1500 IHG Rewards Club points) are also available to EXISTING IHG Rewards Club members with their next stay.

This is the third offer of this type we have seen in recent months.  First up was Virgin Atlantic, second was Avios but only via Iberia Plus.  We now have the British Airways Avios version – and this time there is something in it for existing IHG members too.

Full details are on the IHG website here.

IHG BA Avios promotion

Part 1:  500 Avios for new members

IHG Rewards Club is the loyalty programme for Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo etc. 

A lot of Head for Points readers will already be IHG Rewards Club members – but perhaps there are members of your family, perhaps people with whom you share a British Airways Executive Club household account, who are not?

The small print, and indeed the large print, makes it clear that NO STAY IS REQUIRED.  All you need to do is:

Sign up for IHG Rewards Club via this page of their website – DO NOT USE ANY OTHER PAGE

Set up your profile so that you earn British Airways Avios and not IHG Rewards Club points from your stays

Do it before 31st December

Intriguingly, the small print says that if you use the BA IHG page to join but do not select BA Avios as your preferred earning partner, you will receive 1,500 IHG Rewards Club points instead.  These may be more useful than 500 Avios to some people although they are worth the same in my book.

New members also receive a ‘fast track to Gold’ challenge.  Stay three nights within 90 days of registration and you will be upgraded.  Gold status is not worth a huge amount with IHG, however, and in any event comes automatically with the free IHG Rewards Club credit card.

When do you get the Avios?

The wording is suitably vague:

“Avios will automatically be awarded by Airline partners on completion of Registration, and in any event before 15th February 2018”

but there is a good chance they arrive quickly.

Part 2 – 500 Avios or 1,500 IHG points for EXISTING members

The majority of Head for Points will already be IHG Rewards Club members.

The good news is that this deal has something for you too.

You will receive 500 bonus Avios or 1,500 IHG Rewards Club points with your next booking, as long as you follow these rules:

You MUST book via this special BA page of ihg.com, using the ‘Book Now’ link in the top right

You must book by 31st December

You must stay by 28th February

You must stay at least two nights

If your IHG account is set to earning points, your stay will earn 1,500 bonus points.  If your account is set to earn Avios in British Airways from your stays, you will receive 500 bonus Avios.

You can sign up, or discover more details, on this page of the IHG website.

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

British Airways and Avios, IHG One Rewards

Comments (64)

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

  • JamesB says:
    1 Dec1 December 05:44

    I can confirm, at least for Iberia, that the joining offer works fine. If you prefer the IHG points to avios simply log into your new account again a little later and change the earning preference back to points. With the Iberia stay the 1500 points posted within a month but I cannot recall how long exactly; it was weeks not days. After registering a tracker appeared for the offer under ‘my offers’ page at IHG. Don’t be concerned if this does not appear for a week or two either.

  • Cuchulain says:
    1 Dec1 December 05:50

    Can I use my personal email address to register OH and 2 adult children, so 3 x 500 Avios will be credited to our BAEC HHA a/c ( I am already registered to IHG with that email addy ) ?

    • JamesB says:
      1 Dec1 December 06:01

      No, don’t do that IHG do not allow duplicate accounts and are effective in closing them down.

  • TripRep says:
    1 Dec1 December 06:14

    OT but IHG

    Where’s Iggy is back. Shake the Globe click on the number 1 (for Day 1)
    Day 1 – Citizen Red Arrows Watch

    Appears to be requiring you to guess a choice between 2…

    96000 or 112000

    I went for the latter, would be happy to win it, I don’t go for expensive watches, so its something I would probably buy myself, esp. if it were a divers version.

    • Crafty says:
      1 Dec1 December 07:59

      Interesting, the only one in the catalogue for me when I searched Citizen Arrows is 173000. I didn’t double check so may have got it wrong!

      • BLT says:
        1 Dec1 December 08:21

        I you search arrow, it seems to be 96000 points for the watch in the globe

        • TripRep says:
          1 Dec1 December 09:11

          good shout, realised its far easier to do it on a laptop than on my mobile…

        • TripRep says:
          1 Dec1 December 09:52

          Julie – The watch that I’m shown (using my laptop) has a black strap, only that one matches the 96000.

      • James says:
        1 Dec1 December 09:44

        Wrong leather strap on that one.

        I think BLT was right with 96000.

      • Andrew says:
        1 Dec1 December 09:59

        The 175K one doesn’t have the grey arc to bottom of the face.

    • Liz says:
      1 Dec1 December 09:17

      I can’t find anything that says we get points for entering every day. Is it the same promo as last year? 500 pts for 5 consecutive days of entries?

      • PalCsaky says:
        1 Dec1 December 09:37

        Looks like it’s just a draw for the prizes this year which is a shame as I never win anything anywhere. 2500 IHG points would be much better

    • 1nfrequent says:
      1 Dec1 December 09:41

      When I looked it up it came out as 96000 for the black leather strapped watch.

  • Jo says:
    1 Dec1 December 07:25

    my iberia avios never posted with the last ihg offfer 🙁

  • xcalx says:
    1 Dec1 December 07:59

    The Iberia Status match plus 1000 Avios and the BA German sign up for 4500 Avios promised the Avios would be awarded by the end of November, Nothing here. Add these to the other non paying promos through the year and it’s quite a lot of personal data for zilch.

  • Matt says:
    1 Dec1 December 08:15

    I signed up for IHG for the Iberia deal, but nothing has posted for me or my wife. Has anyone got the 500 Avios for a new account yet?

    • Gavin says:
      1 Dec1 December 08:39

      Nothing for my wife either after I signed her up

    • JamesB says:
      1 Dec1 December 10:02

      See my comment above, no problem for me but took a few weeks and I changed avios back to points.

  • Graham Walsh says:
    1 Dec1 December 08:58

    Typical I booked in the world sale for Birmingham in January.

  • Wally1976 says:
    1 Dec1 December 09:23

    Slightly OT – can someone tell me how I can see when my IHG status expires? I cancelled my free IHG credit card and just wondering when the Gold status will lapse. Thanks.

    • Liz says:
      1 Dec1 December 10:16

      It’s on the member page underneath your points total.

      • Wally1976 says:
        1 Dec1 December 11:41

        It says “Gold Elite” under my total in a nice gold coloured box but no expiry date!?

        • Genghis says:
          1 Dec1 December 11:45

          What does it say next to “Elite Status Expiration Date”?

        • Wally1976 says:
          1 Dec1 December 12:56

          I don’t seem to have that field at all! Under ‘Account Status’ it has my name, rewards club number and earning preference on the left and points balance and membership level on the right. Then below that there’s a 2017 Year-to-date summary with total points earned, elite qualifying points earned, reward nights, 2016 elite rollover nights and elite qualifying nights.

        • Liz says:
          1 Dec1 December 13:24

          You seem to be missing the line between elite qualifying pts earned and reward nights – it should say elite status expiration date – then the date. I cancelled my hubby’s Black IHG Card on 12/11 and his account still shows Platinum till 31/12/18. Not expecting it to stay like that though but will keep a check on it.

        • Wally1976 says:
          1 Dec1 December 14:23

          Strange – I can’t see it on my wife’s account either. Anyway, thanks Liz and Genghis for the help.

    • Lyn says:
      1 Dec1 December 15:21

      It may not show elite expiration date unless you have Ambassador (which Liz and Genghis probably do).

      • Liz says:
        1 Dec1 December 17:37

        I don’t have Ambassador so that theory is out – I have Spire to Dec 18

        • Lyn says:
          1 Dec1 December 17:48

          Definitely out then, sorry to create confusion

        • Lyn says:
          1 Dec1 December 18:01

          Another theory after checking our IHG accounts. I have platinum and don’t have have the elite expiration date line either. My husband is spire and does have it.

      • Alan says:
        3 Dec3 December 20:32

        It separately lists Ambassador expiry and status expiry on my page.

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

New to Head for Points?

Welcome!  We’re the UK’s most-read source of business travel, Avios, frequent flyer and hotel loyalty news. Let us improve how you travel. Got any questions? Ask them in our forums.

Latest Forum Posts

Get 40,000 bonus points (worth 40,000 Avios) and £300 dining credit with The Platinum Card

Check reward flight availability instantly for free!

See a whole year of reward seat availability on one page at SeatSpy.com

Get £10 when you spend £150 on your free Currensea card

Booking a luxury hotel?

Our luxury hotel booking service offers you GUARANTEED extra benefits over booking direct. Works with Four Seasons, Mandarin Oriental, The Ritz Carlton, St Regis and more. We've booked £1.7 million of rooms to date. Click for details.

SME? EARN POINTS WORTH 10,500 AVIOS WITH CAPITAL ON TAP

Get 20,000 bonus points, four airport lounge passes and your first year free with American Express Gold

The UK's biggest frequent flyer website uses cookies, which you can block via your browser settings. Continuing implies your consent to this policy. Our privacy policy is here.

Got it!