The reason why you haven’t been able to apply for the Priority Club credit cards

For the last couple of weeks, the application page for the Priority Club (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental) credit cards has been ‘temporarily unavailable’.

We now know why.

On June 23rd, the Priority Club cards are – finally – being relaunched as IHG Rewards Club credit cards.

From the minimal amount of detail released to date, nothing will change.  Although, if that was the case, I don’t know why the existing cards were not simply rebranded.

This is what existing cardholders have been told:

On 23 June, your Priority Club Visa (or Priority Club Black Visa) will become an IHG Rewards Club Visa (or IHG Rewards Club Black Visa)

There is no change to the current earnings rate

The cards will still be issued by Barclays and will, for the first time, be part of the ‘My Barclaycard’ platform.  (There was also some wording about how, if you have a Barclaycard in default, this may now lead to your IHG card being placed in default.)

The new cards will be contactless

All of this is for EXISTING cardholders.  There is no mention of what the offer will be for new cardholders or whether new cardholders will be offered a combined Amex / Visa package (existing cardholders do not, but that would require a new card agreement).

None of this answers one very obvious question.  A lot of ‘Big Win’ targets involved taking out an IHG credit card in order to trigger the maximum bonus.  Not only has the card not been available for two weeks, it now looks like it will not be available again until June!  What now happens to all of these ‘Big Win’ participants?

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IHG Rewards update – June 2021:

Get bonus points: The current IHG Rewards promotion is ‘Triple Your Points’ – our full article is here. It runs from 15th May to 16th August. You receive double base points on your second stay and triple base points on your third and subsequent stays. You can register on this page of ihg.com.

New to IHG Rewards?  Read our two-part overview of IHG Rewards here and here and our article on expiry rules here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG 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.