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UPDATE – APRIL 2024:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.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

  • Jon barton says:
    6 Sep6 September 09:17

    Trying to find a link to apply for the ihg credit card to boost points however can’t find it anywhere? Any ideas if it’s still running or where it is

  • Andy H says:
    6 Sep6 September 09:30

    I got: 2 nights or 57,300 points.
    Not sure what the T&Cs are for the “Travel 2 times internationally”?
    2 different hotels internationally, or 2 trips to the same hotel. Big difference.

    9,600 – Stay 8 nights at any hotel

    9,600 – Stay at 2 brands

    5,600 – Stay 3 Saturdays at any hotel

    4,800 – Book 2 stays including a Friday or Sunday night (stay must include 2 or more nights)

    2,000 – Book 1 stay using the Bonus Points Package with breakfast

    9,600 – Travel 2 times internationally

    100 – Take our survey

    • timezonehopper says:
      6 Sep6 September 09:56

      The “Travel 2 times internationally” requires stays in 2 different countries outside your normal country of residence. Here’s the key sentence in the Terms and Conditions:

      Only one hotel stay per distinct country outside of your country of residence as indicated on your membership profile at the time of the promotion will be counted towards this Offer.

  • Brian says:
    6 Sep6 September 10:07

    I don’t quite understand why people with lots of stays are complaining about the difficult targets they have been set, particularly on other sites like Loyalty Lobby. IHG isn’t a charity – the idea of this promotion, like all promotions, is to get people to spend money. They’re not stupid enough to ask somebody with no stays to fulfil difficult targets, since they need to dangle the carrot. Similarly, it would be stupid of them to offer somebody who, according to their records, stays a lot at their hotels anyway the chance to earn easy points with just a couple of stays.

    • Stephen says:
      6 Sep6 September 10:28

      I disagree regarding myself who is a frequent stayer, but i do agree with some of your statement regarding infrequent guests.

      They know my trends and have made it easy for me to achieve my target, and I will obtain over 100,000 points as mentioned in an earlier post, although this wasn’t the case with the Big Win. When comparing with a colleage who travels equally as much as me they made his last Big Win very achievable. He had UK targets for hotels to stay in, whereas I had China and Australia!

    • Alan says:
      6 Sep6 September 11:13

      I take your point, but I think there are two issues:

      1) Their IT is shocking and they seem very hit or miss at identifying ‘frequent’ guests – in many cases folk with only a couple of stays in the year are being asked to do 10-20 stays, which is just unrealistic

      2) They’re competing with other hotel chains, many of whom have offers on that reward you for each stay. If you’ve no hope of hitting the big targets in this IHG one then there’s little to encourage you to stay at all when others are offering bonuses on every stay. I’ve almost requalified for Hilton Diamond so was willing to move some stays across to IHG (as I did last year for the Big Win), however due to the targets they’ve set they’re ending up getting nothing as I’ve no chance to receiving any meaningful bonus so may as well make use of the per-night bonuses at Hilton.

    • Andy H says:
      12 Sep12 September 07:48

      I have to disagree in my case Brian.
      My total IHG stays in the last 12 months have been 1 night in a HI Express and 1 reward night in a HI.

      I’ve pretty much stopped using them and haven’t stayed in one of their foreign hotels for years.

      Oh, and I haven’t stayed in one of their hotels at a weekend for about 3 years.

      Either they are using very old data, (I used to use them a LOT,) or they’re just stupid!

      • Brian says:
        15 Sep15 September 21:33

        I take your point, Andy. But maybe part of the point of the promotion is to encourage people to stay at IHG hotels outside their normal patterns, i.e. abroad or at weekends. Remember too that you can get the bonus (at least in most cases) without completing every single one of the tasks….

  • whiskerxx says:
    6 Sep6 September 10:31

    A “friend” of mine signed up yesterday and received two lots of this:
    25,000 points or 1 Free Night(s)
    Complete 1 offer and earn 25,000 bonus points or 1 free night(s)

    But no sign of what the offers are??????

  • Stephen says:
    6 Sep6 September 10:33

    So how about this… So far this year I have stayed 27 nights (over 8 months) with IHG. My into the nights promo requires me to complete:
    39 nights (yes, 39!, that’s around 1 stay every 3 nights)
    5 brands
    4 weekends (I never stay at weekends)
    10 Holiday Inn Express nights
    3 international stays (I only stay in the UK)
    Something tells me I won’t even come close to achieving this which puts me off even giving it a go.

  • gnarlyoldgoatdude says:
    6 Sep6 September 11:18

    Remember that you can also earn American Airlines AAdvantage points by booking stays via their http://www.aadvantageeshopping.com portal and clicking through from Crowne Plaza. It’s currently 3miles per USD, so Mr Rebates (Thanks Stephen) looks to be a better deal.

  • richard1 says:
    6 Sep6 September 12:19

    Do bookings made via hotels.com count ?

    • Alan says:
      6 Sep6 September 12:45

      Nope, they don’t earn IHG points so are non-qualifying -you need to book direct with IHG.

  • Gordon says:
    6 Sep6 September 13:07

    I never use holiday inn and dont satay in chain hotels much apart from main family holidays. Is it worth me signing up to try and achieve the bonus. I normally have a couple of london nights per year for the freebies.

    Do you actually have to stay in the hotels? Could i make a booking and pay for it, check in, go to the room briefly, go home and then come back the next day and check out?

    • N says:
      6 Sep6 September 13:36

      You need to check in, but you don’t need to check out. They’ll do that automatically

    • N says:
      6 Sep6 September 13:37

      Forgot to add – only you can decide if it is worth it for you. But you may as as well sign up and see what they offer you.

    • Rob says:
      6 Sep6 September 14:23

      No need to check out, just leave the key in the room. If you feel guilty, ring up and say you had to dash out because you were running rate!

    • Mark says:
      6 Sep6 September 15:39

      @Gordon. Yes, that seems to be fine – I’ve done it a couple of times. When you check in tell them you are off to a party, and “hope to make it back tonight sometime”! If you are platinum, get your free drink or points too!

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