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Don’t forget IHG Rewards Club ‘Friends & Family’ rates for cheap hotels

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Back in 2009, when the hotel business was in real trouble, IHG Rewards Club launched a special deal for stays at Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, Indigo, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites and Candlewood Suites hotels.

It was called ‘Friends & Family’ and was nominally aimed at people who were friends or relatives of hotel employees.

However, the company made no secret of the fact that they were happy for anyone to use it, and even posted links on forums that could be used. After some pushback, people claiming to be friends of Steve Sickel, the head of the programme, found that hotels would occasionally not let them use the rate. Other links, such as this ‘Friends and Family’ link that I use, continue to work just fine.

IHG Friends Family rate

The Friends & Family deals are usually priced below the ‘Advance Saver’ rate for the same dates. They carry the same conditions, ie no changes and no refunds.

The only difference is that these rates do NOT earn IHG Rewards Club points. Hotels do a VERY good job of enforcing this rule. You won’t earn stay credit either. Bear this in mind when booking, especially if you are taking part in the ‘Accelerate’ promotion.

Availability under this programme is worse than it used to be but you can still find the odd deal.

In London on Saturday 12th March, the Friends & Family link gives:

  • InterContinental Park Lane at £231 vs £265
  • Staybridge Suites Vauxhall at £96 vs £114
  • Holiday Inn Bloomsbury at £132 vs £156

Various other properties were available as well. This rate is valid worldwide, not just in the UK.

You have absolutely nothing to worry about by booking this rate using the link above. You will not be asked for any special ID or proof of your friendship with Jennifer.  Just be very clear that you will NOT receive any points or stay credit.

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 (302)

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

  • luke says:
    17 Feb17 February 16:12

    people seem worried about hitting spending targets short term…

    easy problem to solve…just buy fully refundable flight on aa.com website….hit your bonus, then cancel and get a refund and carry on…simples, done it many many times…easy as..

    luke

    • James says:
      17 Feb17 February 16:38

      Only easy if you can stomach the cost of paying your credit card bill until such a time that the points get posted?

      • luke says:
        17 Feb17 February 16:47

        hi james,

        I book and then cancel in the same credit card cycle….so am never out of pocket…if you book the flight just after your statement date, you will get your welcome bonus, and then your refund, all in one month….also, flexible business class to usa can be up to 7000 pounds, so if you need a companion voucher with your BAPP but haven’t spent enough, do what I suggest above and you can get it immediately as it posts to your exec club account within 3-4 days of meeting the 10k target…

        • harry says:
          17 Feb17 February 16:50

          The Amex people who read hfp are on your case already 🙂

          I might do something like that once, but I’d never be a serial offender…too much to lose

          • James says:
            17 Feb17 February 16:57

            Yes agreed Harry, whether you get away with it or not isn’t worth that risk in my eyes. each to their own. This will always work until the last time, when Amex invoke a T&C that refers to abuse of the system, and that will be that. Maybe it won’t ever happen? But I wouldn’t personally take that risk. Each to their own and good luck to you Luke.

          • luke says:
            17 Feb17 February 17:00

            harry 🙂

            as long as i spend the 10 grand eventually, no one is actually losing anything if you think about it, all i am doing is activating my companion voucher earlier than would otherwise be the case,

            am always sure to actually spend the 10 grand total before closing the account, otherwise you are right, amex would get pi~~ed off with me, don’t want to be blacklisted by amex that’s for sure…don’t cut off the hand that feeds you and all that..

          • harry says:
            17 Feb17 February 17:09

            Luke – it doesn’t bother me remotely that you are doing that, I have a much more devious way to MS [verb] that didn’t go down at all well when I mentioned it a few months ago. Currently on the Biebers which look to be strongly in profit on top of the MS lol

            As long as you’re not getting the points & 241, then closing the a/c (ie ‘stealing’ them) – then I doubt Amex will be over-concerned. I personally wouldn’t want to test their patience, though.

          • Alan says:
            17 Feb17 February 17:44

            Ahh OK that makes more sense – from your original description I (and I suspect others) thought you meant you were doing this then cancelling the card straight away 🙂

        • Waribai says:
          17 Feb17 February 16:58

          So if you book just after your statement date, when do you cancel? Don’t you then have an amex account which is in the red points wise?

  • Waribai says:
    17 Feb17 February 16:48

    Yalking of cats…Has anyone had their pet insurance clubcard points yet?

    • harry says:
      17 Feb17 February 16:55

      Not yet…

      Here’s another funny. I went over the 30K limit last quarter so got chopped back to 30K. There was a ‘signed for’ letter from Tesco to pick up so I assumed it had a cheque in it, as some other (luckier) people said they got a cheque for the difference. When I picked it up, it was just a letter of apology, no cheque at all. Why they had to send that by recorded delivery is completely beyond me. Bit disappointing

      • Louise says:
        17 Feb17 February 17:41

        I had the same, and i paid 70p for the pleasure for delivery to my local post office

  • Louise says:
    17 Feb17 February 18:25

    how exciting, but only a lowly consumer and not self employed. I suppose I will wait it out and see how all you self-employed people get on

  • Ck says:
    17 Feb17 February 18:40

    Did it! Thanks Liz for your help. Thanks Robert for your ongoing advice. Looking forward to playing with this new option. And here is my code mjrz2

    • Liz says:
      17 Feb17 February 18:55

      Ok glad you got there in the end – I didn’t read the t&c’s beforehand and entered other and other under the occupation parts – I am neither employed nor self employed and got accepted. Hopefully I won’t get rejected down the line.

  • Mrs_Fussy says:
    17 Feb17 February 20:09

    I wouldn’t bank on IHG F&F unless someone can confirm!
    OH works with IHG and confirmed that they always ask for a Friends and Family form

    • Callum says:
      17 Feb17 February 23:21

      Well many people say they don’t ask for the form. I haven’t been asked, but the last time I tried was 4 years ago. Back then it was legitimate to put someone senior from the company (some sort of head of marketing?) down as the employee your friends with – I don’t know if that’s still an option?

  • Rob says:
    17 Feb17 February 20:50

    Here is an extra thought on the ‘am I a business?’ question.

    Curve can ONLY make money by recharging purchases to a PERSONAL credit card. It charges the ‘business card’ interchange fee and makes a margin recharging to a personal card which is capped at 0.3% under the EU rules.

    Obviously no big company would use this product. The ONLY market for it is sole traders, freelancers etc who are technically ‘in business’ (like me). This is a relatively small market and they are unlikely to turn people away. ‘Proper’ companies won’t be interested, and even if they were Curve will not want them because they would be recharging to another business credit card – where it makes no profit – rather than to a personal card.

    • harry says:
      17 Feb17 February 21:03

      But won’t retailers be able to differentiate between MC @ 0.3% fee and MC @ 1.3% fee? And just refuse transactions on cards at the higher rate?

      They must easily work out that Curve is an additional card, so customers who find using their transaction on their Curve card is disallowed will just switch to a different card (on the lower rate).

      After all, some retailers still refuse Amex on those grounds. Ie fee too expensive.

      • Alan says:
        17 Feb17 February 21:05

        But remember most retailers (apart from those like Tesco with massive volume) are paying much higher rates to their card processor than the Interchange rate, so I doubt they’d notice any difference.

        • Rob says:
          17 Feb17 February 21:14

          Correct. Only big retailers can negotiate ‘interchange plus’ – small shops are lumbered with a flat fee so they don’t really care.

          Put it this way … any shop which refused Curve would also be refusing every other ‘business’ Visa or MasterCard, plus every non-EU issued Visa or MasterCard. Which is unlikely.

        • harry says:
          17 Feb17 February 21:18

          That explains it.

  • CV3V says:
    17 Feb17 February 21:03

    There is also the MasterCard Partner rate discount for IHG bookings AND guess what, this Curve card thingy is MasterCard! I reckon this makes a good closing post for today 🙂

  • James67 says:
    17 Feb17 February 21:12

    Late to the party here today…only to be hugely disappointed! What I was anticipating and hoping for was that amex scrapped travelmoneynow was because they were going to scrap card fees overseas for both cash and payments.

    Curve does nothing for me because I get:

    1. Fee and load free cash overseas courtesy of N&P, and great cs,
    2. 1.25 avios/£ payments overseas courtesy of £24 Lloyds avios card generating 2 vouchers a year saving over 100k avios on CW redemptions.
    3. An absolute gem of a cost-free MS that just keeps on working regardless of which cc I use including amex.

    No fees, no loads, no hassles, no apps or iOS required. No risk of supercard frustration and embarassment and last but not least no uncertainty as to whether curve is just another supercard mark 2. Hope you all enjoy the ride, I’m just going to look on from the sidelines this time.

    • Leo says:
      17 Feb17 February 21:47

      I’m not bothering either, although I am genuinely self-employed! Supercard has worked ok for me and served me well with HMRC. I don’t churn massively but when I’m trying to hit a target spend I just put my next holiday on the new card….

      • James says:
        17 Feb17 February 21:53

        Leo, if you can’t link supercard with Amex, what do you link in to on supercard?

      • James67 says:
        17 Feb17 February 22:29

        The problem I have Leo is that the avios themselves have become virtually ‘pointless’ (except in limitted circumstances) in this era of cheap premium revenue fares. I stll use them but in effect all I’m getting for 150k avios is the ability to change or cancel two one way flights for £35 each. Taxes and fees are a little cheaper than revenue fares but not by much

    • Andy says:
      17 Feb17 February 21:48

      Any point 3 is? 🙂

    • James says:
      17 Feb17 February 21:52

      James, could you expand more on point 3 please?

      • Waribai says:
        17 Feb17 February 21:59

        hear, hear…at least give us a hint!

      • James67 says:
        17 Feb17 February 22:37

        No big secret…council tax. Just depends on your luck where you live. I’m lucky here, my overspend just keeps refunding to my bank. Zero fees for online visa or mc payments, and if I want to use amex I just stop by a co-op paypoint.

        • harry says:
          17 Feb17 February 22:41

          Same here – first 3Vs then Amex by PP – cheque back in the post – but I’d be worried about over-doing it

          • James67 says:
            17 Feb17 February 22:56

            Because I’m struggling to get real value from my avios on mh routes Harry I’m not at risk overdoing it, but it’s there when I need to hit a spend target.

          • Andy says:
            17 Feb17 February 23:01

            Is it still £200 limit per PP transaction?

          • James67 says:
            17 Feb17 February 23:22

            @Andy, I’ve no idea because my council limits it to just £125 per payment so it is probably dependent on both ouncils and PP.

        • James says:
          17 Feb17 February 22:50

          Thanks James. Not sure about the overpayment for mine locally but they only take MC or Visa (or bank transfer, direct debit etc) for payment. Good for you though, nice one.

        • Waribai says:
          17 Feb17 February 22:53

          Thanks James. Have see nthat oen mentioned before in the 3V days and that did actually used to work here in my area with 3V then they stopped working suddenly. Surely, though refunding to your bank involves you phoning them up? Also, once you’ve rinsed it a few times, doesn’t the council get suspicious?

          • harry says:
            17 Feb17 February 22:56

            Check out Amex @ PP, many councils allow PP. Mine sent cheque without me asking.

          • James says:
            17 Feb17 February 23:11

            Checked, sadly Bromley council don’t take it from what I can see. Lewisham, the next borough along do! I think moving home just to get MS might be a bit extreme :o)

          • James67 says:
            17 Feb17 February 23:04

            Apart from once I called and got what appeared to be a former lounge dragon on the other end, no issues at all. Even with her it was just a misunderstanding because she thought I wanted a refund on the payments due, not just the overpayments.

    • CV3V says:
      17 Feb17 February 22:38

      Yeah we’d all love to know James manufactured spend, and he’s probably mentioned it in the past, but after NS&I and 3v its gonna be kept in the circle of trust! I’m racking my brains to remember!

    • Gulz says:
      17 Feb17 February 23:00

      Keen to know about the cost-free MS… any clues?

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