When IHG Rewards Club – the Holiday Inn, InterContinental, Crowne Plaza etc scheme – announced changes to its programme last week, most people focussed on July 1st as the key date. This is the date that the new top tier for people staying 75 nights or earning 75,000 base points kicks in.
What you may have not spotted is that reward pricing changes earlier – on May 1st. Given all the upheaval about the Avios changes on April 28th, you don’t want to let the IHG changes slip by.
This is what you need to remember:
350 hotels are going up in price by 5,000 or 10,000 points
150 hotels are going down in price by 5,000 points
The 50,000 points cap is NOT changing
All redemption rooms can be cancelled without penalty
IHG is not releasing a list of which hotels will change category
If you think you might need an IHG Rewards Club redemption for later in the year, you have nothing to lose by hopping over to ihg.com and booking it now.
The only exception is if you are booking a 50,000 point per night InterContinental hotel, as you know that these will not be increasing.
To be honest, I doubt that most big city hotels will change much. We may see some London properties go down – I doubt a Holiday Inn Express at 35,000 points is attracting many redemptions when InterContinental Park Lane is only 50,000 points.
There are two exceptional bargains in London which might disappear on May 1st.
The first is Holiday Inn Wembley. This is a fully refurbished hotel, adjacent to Wembley Stadium, which is only 10,000 points per night. I have stayed there and reviewed it here.
The second is Holiday Inn Express Wimbledon South. This is apparently opposite Colliers Wood tube station. I have never visited the hotel but it claims to have been refurbished recently. It can booked for 15,000 points per night.
You might want to spend some time over at ihg.com making speculative bookings over the next few days. If you change your plans, you get all of your points back instantly when you cancel and there are no fees to do so.
(Want to earn more hotel points? To see our complete list of promotions from the major chains, click here to visit our ‘Hotel Promos’ page or use the link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)
About Head for Points
I spent 2 nights at Holiday Inn Express Wimbledon late last year as Holiday Inn Wembley was full – it is good value for the 15k points per night. However if it increases to 20k and Holiday Inn Commercial Road stays at 20k then I would be more inclined to stay there in future as it is more central.
I wouln’t be surprised if the Amstel increases to 50k points too.
I have a fear for the twin gems of Koh Samui and Danang going up
That is a risk, I was very surprised when I booked it last year to find it was only 40k. Cash rates can be obscene.
Indeed. We were there last week and a basic room would have cost over €700. The 40k points we paid for our river view room felt like a bargain.
Nor the IC HK to bring it up to the same rate as the (inferior) IC GS
Hopefully Bangkok prices will be reduced. Ridiculously high when considering the low cash prices and the large amount of competition in the city.
Nuts… I get the feeling my IHG Credit Card points won’t have landed before these changes come in 🙁
Mine haven’t posted yet either! I decided to log into my new credit card account online this morning and discovered the statement date was 12 days ago but I never got an email to tell me despite my settings showing online statements by email. So I paid the account this morning – hopefully my points will now post quickly!
My points from my IHG CC have all posted 18 days after the bills were sent to me. I pay it off straight away, so I don’t know if the 18 days is linked to when I pay or when the bill is issued.
I am short a few thousand points for the magical 75,000. Got a few stays coming up and am racking my brains for some cost effective manufactured spend between now and end of May.
are your credit card spend points counting as Elite points? To be honest i only ever bought a bottle of water on my card to trigger the points!
You won’t have to earn the points before end of May, you will still have the remainder of the year to earn the 75,000 points and get the new status for this year and all of 2016.
Yes, card points count as elite points
When is the next points break due? When will the list of changes from IHG be published?
The list won’t be published. However, after May 1st, someone will put one together via a screen-scraping tool and I will publish the interesting ones. Of course, it will be too late anyway ….
PointBreaks – good question, end of April or end of May?
I booked 4 nights in NYC yesterday for end of May/early June. 2 free nights from ITN/SYS and 2 reward nights for 30K points plus $40 each. So, 4 nights for 80 bucks. Along with 3 nights in DC for less than £120 when you take off the hotels.com welcome rewards, I’m happy.