The IHG Rewards Club credit cards are half back

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• YOUP says:

  4 Oct4 October 10:37

  There’s also the outstanding question of whether a previous card holder can reapply to get the joining bonus again. Considering the card issuer remains BarclayCard, I’m not sure it will be possible.

  Mind you, I was pleased to get a refund of my annual fee when I cancelled it during the changes. ^^

  • Rob says:

    4 Oct4 October 13:35

    You can definitely reapply for the Hilton card, plenty of people have done that. It just needs a decent gap, I usually say a year but that it not a fixed rule.

• Toby Garner says:

  4 Oct4 October 11:45

  Hi Raffles,

  I’m on a 12 month break from the Hilton Barclaycard. I have 9 months left until I can reapply and get the free night again.

  Do you know if getting the ihg card will impact this and “reset” my 12 months?

  Thanks in advance,

  Toby

  • Rob says:

    4 Oct4 October 13:34

    No, it won’t reset anything, although you have to hope that Barclaycard is happy for you to have two of their cards at once.

    The Hilton 12 month rule is not fixed, by the way. That is what I advise people because it seems to work but I also know people who have successfully reapplied with a smaller gap.

    • Toby Garner says:

      7 Oct7 October 20:45

      Many thanks.

• Love Flying says:

  4 Oct4 October 11:46

  Many thanks, I have already saved about £600 booking three Dec nights in NYC using the IHG 50% of points promo you posted about and another £60 on Intercont Park Lane in Nov using the friends and family! Was considering paying for ambassador for what I can see would be a 50/50 chance of upgrade, would the Plat elite status with the Premium card offer similar chances?
  Also any views on the chances of 30k or even 40k links for the Prem card appearing as in previous years, might be then worth using the points to buy ambassador status?

  Any advice great appreciated!

  • Rob says:

    4 Oct4 October 13:33

    If the hotel gives benefits on reward nights (most IC’s do even though it isn’t required) then the benefits are guaranteed, so you would get a one-level upgrade, 4pm check out, free Pay TV film, fruit and water plus the 5,000 points for signing up. The one-level upgrade will only be to a slightly larger room I think as PL has a lot of different room levels.

    Platinum usually gets you nothing at IC’s although my wife got a 2pm check-out offered to her, and a welcome gift, at Le Grand in Paris last month. That said, the card is worth getting anyway if you get 20,000 points for £99 plus the decent earnings rate.

    The 30k/40k links may well come back but it will take a few months for them to turn up I reckon. The 30k one was advertised in hotel receptions alongside the 15k on the free card.

    • Love Flying says:

      4 Oct4 October 15:26

      Many thanks Raffles

  • Brian says:

    4 Oct4 October 23:11

    When I stayed at the IC Budapest, I was given an upgrade to a river view room (without asking), plus a welcome gift (Hungarian paprika and a wooden spoon!!) in the room. I’m Platinum, but not an Ambassador.

• Michael says:

  4 Oct4 October 12:32

  Are there further ways to easily accumulate IHG points, apart from buying, card spent or hotel nights?

  • Rob says:

    4 Oct4 October 13:28

    They convert 1:1 from Virgin Atlantic (in chunk of 10,000). This theoretically allows you to convert Tesco / Amex Membership Rewards / Heathrow Rewards to Virgin Flying Club and then on to IHG. This is not great value but if you need a small number it saves you buying them.

    From Tesco, for eg, £2.50 of Tesco vouchers would be 625 Virgin so 625 IHG Rewards Club. That is 0.4p per point based on the face value of the Tesco vouchers, so if you redeemed for 0.5p per IHG point then you are effectively getting 1.25x face value of your Tesco vouchers. This is not as good as many other deals.

• Thunderbirds says:

  5 Oct5 October 09:25

  On an IHG related note. How are people finding the points posting for the Into The Nights promotion. I’m finding it slow but so far it seems to be accurate with nothing missing. This is unusual for IHG…

• Thywillbedone says:

  6 Oct6 October 09:54

  Will have to think carefully about getting the Premium card with only 20k bonus points (the bonus previously being 40k pts) – not sure it will be worth diverting £10k of my spend away from other cards/programmes to only get c.1.5 nights at an IC.

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