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The IHG credit cards are back – and with a sign-up bonus (Part 2)

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This is the 2nd part of my analysis of the two new IHG Rewards Club credit cards.  Part 1, focussing on the free card, can be found here.

The paid-for version – IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard

IHG Rewards Club credit card premium

The headline features of this card are:

£99 annual fee

20,000 IHG Rewards Club points for joining and spending £200 in the first three months – these are worth about £80 of free hotel rooms or transferable to 4,000 Avios points or other airline miles

Platinum status in IHG Rewards Club for as long as you hold the card.  This is no longer the top level following the launch of the Spire tier.  However, if you do a few Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza or Indigo stays then it is worth having.  It is occasionally enough for a Club room upgrade at a Crowne Plaza.

2 IHG Rewards Club point per £1 spent.  I value IHG points at 0.4p so this is a 0.8% return.

4 IHG Rewards Club points per £1 when you pay at IHG hotels.  This would be roughly a 1.6% return which is very good.

4 IHG Rewards Club points per £1 when you use the card abroad.  As the card has a 2.99% FX fee you would be better off using a card without FX fees instead.  I only value the points at 1.6%.  The only reason to use the card abroad would be to work towards your free night voucher or earn additional IHG status points.

A free night voucher for any IHG hotel for spending £10,000.  Use it at the InterContinental Paris, London, New York etc and you could be looking at £250 of value.

Representative APR is 41.5% variable including the £99 fee, based on a £1200 credit limit

There is a minimum income requirement of £10,000, although Creation stress that this cannot come from unemployment benefit!

It is important to note that points from day-to-day spend count towards elite status.  The sign-up bonus does NOT count towards elite status.  A heavy spender could get Spire Elite status simply by putting £37,500 of spending through this card.

According to the terms and conditions:  “If your IHG Rewards Club Credit Card account is closed within the first 6 months of opening, IHG reserves the right to deduct the 20,000 bonus Rewards points from your IHG Rewards Club account.”  As you do NOT get a pro-rata fee refund for cancelling, this is unlikely to be an issue for anyone.

I have one minor concern.  The rules state, re the free night:

“On the anniversary of your account opening, so long as your account remains active, you will earn one free night voucher to redeem at any IHG property, provided you make annual Purchases totalling a minimum of £10,000.”

The free night has always turned up within a few weeks of passing the £10,000 target.  One interpretation of this line is that you don’t get the voucher now until the end of your card year – although I am more inclined to think that someone at Creation’s law firm failed their English GCSE.

What do I think?

If you are ONLY looking to exploit the sign-up bonus then this is not the card for you.  You would be mad to pay £99 for a sign-up bonus worth £80 at best, especially as the points do not count towards status.  You should focus on the free card where the smaller 10,000 point sign-up bonus is worth £40.

For long term spending, however, this is a very good card.   I have had the Barclaycard version of this card for a couple of years and I put a lot of money through it, including tax payments.

Imagine spending £10,000 on the card in a year.  You would get:

20,000 IHG Rewards Club points, worth £80 or so, assuming all spend is in the UK and not at IHG hotels

Those points count towards status, which could be important if you are pushing for Spire Elite

Your free night voucher, worth say £250 if used at an expensive InterContinental

You are getting £330 of benefits for an annual fee of £99.  That is a gain of £231 or 2.31% of a £10,000 spend, which is excellent.

You also need to add in whatever value you ascribe to Platinum status in IHG Rewards Club.

I have just renewed my Spire Elite status for 2017 and it was almost entirely down to spending on this credit card.  Reaching Spire Elite via 75,000 status points triggers a bonus of 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points.  You could argue that this is an additional bonus for anyone who spends £37,500 on the card.

If you are looking for a new Visa or Mastercard and you have the ability to put £10,000 of spending through the card to trigger the free night, I would recommend it.

I would NOT necessarily recommend it if you will not spend £10,000 to earn the free night.  For low spenders, the higher earnings rate does not justify the £99 fee compared to the free IHG Rewards Club Mastercard.  The only exception is if you stay enough at IHG hotels to benefit from Platinum status but you don’t stay enough to actually earn it from your stays.

You can apply for the IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard here.

There is NO refer-a-friend deal available for these cards so you might as well apply directly via the links above.

Want to earn more points from credit cards? – April 2024 update

If you are looking to apply for a new credit card, here are our top recommendations based on the current sign-up bonuses.

In February 2022, Barclaycard launched two exciting new Barclaycard Avios Mastercard cards with a bonus of up to 25,000 Avios. You can apply here.

You qualify for the bonus on these cards even if you have a British Airways American Express card:

Barclaycard Avios Plus card

Barclaycard Avios Plus Mastercard

Get 25,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £10,000 Read our full review

Barclaycard Avios card

Barclaycard Avios Mastercard

5,000 Avios for signing up and an upgrade voucher at £20,000 Read our full review

You can see our full directory of all UK cards which earn airline or hotel points here. Here are the best of the other deals currently available.

British Airways American Express Premium Plus

25,000 Avios and the famous annual 2-4-1 voucher Read our full review

American Express Preferred Rewards Gold

Your best beginner’s card – 20,000 points, FREE for a year & four airport lounge passes Read our full review

The Platinum Card from American Express

40,000 bonus points and a huge range of valuable benefits – for a fee Read our full review

Virgin Atlantic Reward+ Mastercard

15,000 bonus points and 1.5 points for every £1 you spend Read our full review

Earning miles and points from small business cards

If you are a sole trader or run a small company, you may also want to check out these offers:

SPECIAL OFFER: Until 12th May 2024, the Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa card is offering a bonus of 30,000 points, convertible into 30,000 Avios. You must have a Limited Company to apply. Click here to learn more and click here to apply.

British Airways Accelerating Business American Express

30,000 Avios sign-up bonus – plus annual bonuses of up to 30,000 Avios Read our full review

American Express Business Platinum

40,000 points sign-up bonus and an annual £200 Amex Travel credit Read our full review

American Express Business Gold

20,000 points sign-up bonus and FREE for a year Read our full review

Capital on Tap Business Rewards Visa

Huge 30,000 points bonus until 12th May 2024 Read our full review

For a non-American Express option, we also recommend the Barclaycard Select Cashback card for sole traders and small businesses. It is FREE and you receive 1% cashback on your spending.

Barclaycard Select Cashback Business Credit Card

1% cashback uncapped* on all your business spending (T&C apply) Read our full review

Category

IHG One Rewards

Comments (97)

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

  • Dannyrado says:
    5 Jul5 July 07:54

    Applied, thanks raffles. Been waiting for a card that I can move to, such that I don’t have to keep earning these pointless arseios.

    I’ll earn the voucher every year. And actually try a little harder on the accelerate promos, should work out well.

  • Jordan D says:
    5 Jul5 July 08:31

    How does the overseas FX fees compare with Amex? Might be the defining factor.

    Separately – are we ever going to see the Marriott Rewards card relaunched in the UK?

    • Rob says:
      5 Jul5 July 09:16

      Creation still advertise Marriott as a client on their home page so I imagine it will. They just need to get an FCA licence. Alternatively, as I have a licence, they could let HFP be the exclusive promoter of the card 🙂

      It is laughable that the biggest hotel company in the world is incapable of doing something which even I managed to do – unless they are struggling to find UK based staff with the necessary financial services qualifications to be approved.

      • Jordan D says:
        5 Jul5 July 10:22

        Will we then be in a situation where Creation will only let you have one or the other but not both credit cards? (Assuming Marriott is relaunched).

      • The_Real_A says:
        5 Jul5 July 10:32

        Rob – out of interest are you not able to contract (outsource!) the FCA responsibility in relation to this? i.e. an accountancy or legal firm

        • Rob says:
          5 Jul5 July 12:17

          Not as far as I know. And why would a 3rd party risk losing their licence if Marriott for example runs ads with the wrong wording?

    • John says:
      5 Jul5 July 09:23

      So do you get 6 IHG points per £ for spending at IHG hotels overseas?

      • Rob says:
        5 Jul5 July 09:35

        No. You only get four – at least, that is how Barclaycard did it.

        • AndyS says:
          5 Jul5 July 10:51

          This leads to another dilema. If I get this card, and am booking ihg hotel abroad, am I better off using this card for the extra ihg points or supercard for the lack of exchange fees? (Particularly if the supercard is linked to this ihg card so will get some points)!

          • Alan says:
            5 Jul5 July 11:04

            I don’t think it’s too much of dilemma TBH – comparing the forex fee to the IHG points earned you’d be much better going for no fee and lower points by putting it via Supercard. The exception would be if you needed the spend to trigger the free night voucher then it has a bit more value.

          • AndyS says:
            5 Jul5 July 11:22

            Thanks, haven’t got my math head on yet so couldn’t work out if the points were worth more than the forex charge

          • Alan says:
            5 Jul5 July 11:31

            If you value them at 0.4p (as Raffles does) then 1.6% back for the 4x earning abroad. Compare this to 2.99% forex fee and you’re losing out. However as I say if you are going to have difficulty hitting the spending target to get the free night voucher then it’s worth considering – personally I’d still put it through Supercard instead and take the lower non-foreign spend 0.8% earning instead 🙂

          • Scallder says:
            5 Jul5 July 16:04

            Although Alan if the Supercard spend is hitting this card anyway then the point about using it for the free night voucher isn’t the case as the spend is hitting it regardless 🙂

          • Alan says:
            6 Jul6 July 00:52

            Haha an excellent point! 🙂

          • Joe says:
            5 Jul5 July 17:21

            You’ll get 2 points per pound for going via Supercard anyway, so you’re only missing out on an extra 2 points per pound to spend directly on the card – this means you’d be paying about 1.5p per point. One scenario where this might be worth it though is if the extra points push you into Spire, where you could get another 25k points back from IHG. If you wouldn’t be able to reach Spire without those extra points then you might decide it’s worth it.

          • Genghis says:
            5 Jul5 July 17:34

            1.5p per point is very expensive to me. There are much cheaper ways to do some manufactured spend.

  • Liz says:
    5 Jul5 July 08:49

    I have Spire Elite at the moment and had a card sent which said expired 2016 – then earlier this year I received a new card saying expiring 2017 – my account says elite status expires 2016 – at the moment I have 45k qualifying pts for this year. I don’t know whether this new card has extended my spire status to the end of 2017 or not – I won’t reach 75k with just cc spend. I could transfer some virgin miles over towards the end of the year but I don’t want to waste them if I already have spire secured for next year – can anyone help me confirm whether I have spire extended to the end of 2017. Have others had this?

    • Rob says:
      5 Jul5 July 09:18

      It wouldn’t necessarily be a waste because you would get the 25k bonus points for renewing Spire. 30k Virgin would get you 55k IHG in total which is decent.

    • John says:
      5 Jul5 July 09:22

      Doesn’t status last until March?

      I’ve never received a Spire card despite requesting twice.

  • DW says:
    5 Jul5 July 09:38

    How many points per pound at an overseas IHG? I’m thinking probably 6?

    • Nick says:
      5 Jul5 July 11:55

      4 I imagine.

      On that subject…. I remember the good old days when Amex used to dish out cumulative points on supermarket spend and petrol, and sometimes random additional points too. I am pretty sure I was getting 9 points per £1 at some point. On a free card, that came with a huge sign-up bonus. Those were the days….

  • Jumble Tales says:
    5 Jul5 July 09:43

    Raffles, what do you advise for those of us with the equivalent premium Barclaycard IHG, now we can presumably expect it to have a limited lifespan? Should we apply for the Creation version and if so it is better to apply after closing the Barclaycard or while it is still running, given their generous credit limit?

    • Rob says:
      5 Jul5 July 09:49

      IHG tell me that the Barclays card will continue. They may be tied into a longer contract.

  • aceman says:
    5 Jul5 July 10:15

    phew finally!

    So long term decent spend, I’m thinking this better than the HH card?

    On thing, I’ve always thought IHG hotels are a little hit and miss with upgrades, is this the case? on spend this year I’ll easily make sprie elite, but subsequent years not, so will Platinum actually be of any use?

    • Rob says:
      5 Jul5 July 10:23

      More use than no status …. all you are guaranteed is 500 points and/or a free drink at check-in!

      • Jonathan says:
        5 Jul5 July 10:52

        Will it be possible to combine points from 2 accounts (mine and mrs) so the 2 sign up bonus and the points from each spending 10k will be 60 k combine enough for another night?

  • Alan says:
    5 Jul5 July 11:54

    I’m holding out for a little bit for that reason too! Only just got a 2yr Halifax no-fee 0% card too so probably will leave it a little bit before making another application. Closing old accounts in the meantime to tidy up my credit file!

  • Jack says:
    5 Jul5 July 12:05

    Is this card worth having for converting points to Avios?

    • Rob says:
      5 Jul5 July 12:13

      Tesco Premium is 0.6 per £1 rather than 0.4 here – but of course you get the free night voucher and fee lower.

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