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?!

(To see our complete list of all current credit card bonuses, click here to visit our ‘Credit Cards Update’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)