BOOK THIS AFTERNOON: New IHG PointBreaks list of 100 x 5,000 point hotels

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• Save EC Rewards says:

  31 Jul31 July 03:42

  I really struggle to find anything useful *for me* in Pointbreaks for a long time. Might head up to ABZ just for the chance to use them. Hire a car when up there.

  Does anyone know when the new BA lounge in ABZ is supposed to open?

• Gulz says:

  31 Jul31 July 09:10

  Will a pointsbreak booking count towards the accelerate promotion? Also, does anyone know if its possible to book a pointsbreak hotel via the app?

  • Genghis says:

    31 Jul31 July 09:53

    Only perhaps for specific points bookings – not sure if these exist, though?

• Rob says:

  31 Jul31 July 10:20

  Ta, have another trip to book for early Sep. Currently sitting on a VTEC. (Why doesn’t VT wi-fi like Dropbox, by the way? Despite free wi-fi I need to tether my phone as Dropbox won’t work off it. Had the same issue on WC last week.)

  Booked current trip using the 20% Virgin Red app. I had foolishly linked by Virgin Red account to my Virgin Trains account, which immediately stopped me getting the discount codes! Had to delete the app and reinstall with a new account, and suddenly the 20% discount came back.

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    31 Jul31 July 10:35

    The hint for Virgin Red is if you have two phones then have one linked to all your Virgin accounts and another one where it’s not linked.

    The theory is the 20% offer is for new customers, you then take the offer, create an account with VTWC/EC and then link them up to Virgin Red and then the offer disappears.

    The 20% offer has been running pretty much from the beginning but only if you’re not linked.

    They do sometimes offer better offers if you’re linked, I’ve seen 30% and 40% before so that’s why it’s good to have both. Also VTWC gives you WiFi via Red if you’re linked, sometimes they’ve thrown up other offers as well for linked people such as a free hot drink in the Foodbar (only useful if standard), or a snack.

  • Andy S says:

    31 Jul31 July 10:57

    Drop box counts as file sharing, I guess they’re worried it will suck up their limited bandwidth

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    31 Jul31 July 11:13

    I think dropbox was a conscious block as they don’t want you downloading large files (streaming is also banned, although not all providers are). My workaround is connecting to the office VPN, but then that can be a bit flaky if the connection is slow.

    Most of these restrictions were put in before the 4G rollout so I think they should be revisited now.

  • Alan says:

    31 Jul31 July 17:08

    It’s because Dropbox has the potential to suck up huge amounts of bandwidth (similar to video streaming services), depending upon how long since you last synced and how much data is due to sync – they therefore block access to all these streaming services to try and maintain viable network speeds for all users.

• Scottydogg says:

  31 Jul31 July 10:23

  Ive been collecting IHG points for about a year now and have found the Points Break options are always very poor

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    31 Jul31 July 10:50

    When they first started (or at least when I first heard of them), there was some amazing offers.

    ICs I’ve stayed in on point breaks have been Nairobi, Athens and Amman. There used to be plenty more ICs participating too, but I was either too slow or unable to make it on those dates. The IC redemptions always got snapped up quickly. I stayed in Amman for a month, I had a project I could work remotely and it actually worked well for me. I was Royal Ambassador status at the time and got upgrades and lounge access so it was a nice environment to work from.

    There was numerous Crowne Plazas around Europe that I stayed in too, but for the past few years, there’s nothing that has inspired me.

    I agree with Rob on the HIX Croydon being a great deal if you need to be in London. Although Croydon is not my first choice of place to be in London the transport connections are great.

• Gavin says:

  31 Jul31 July 10:46

  Agree, but have got decent 2 redemptions lined up for the in-laws when they visit next month – 30000 points / room at the nearby, modern HI Reading M4 Junction 10 when the cash price is £171.00

  Points beats cash here as I can’t really find any decent redemption options to use myself

• S879 says:

  31 Jul31 July 10:49

  Can you book Points break rooms for family i.e. not be there at all?

  • Save East Coast Rewards says:

    31 Jul31 July 10:54

    I’ve done so before (quite a few years ago so policy may have changed). Not sure of the rules, but to be on the safe side I emailed the hotel and checked it was OK. Back then I was told that it was OK to book for others but the hotel wasn’t supposed to offer any status benefits.

    As it was a Holiday Inn I’d booked it’s hard to tell whether they got any status benefits or whether I’d have got any if staying!

    • S879 says:

      31 Jul31 July 12:35

      Thanks for the info.

• Brasov says:

  31 Jul31 July 14:13

  Is there anything to do in Ipswich, or Zilina?

  • john says:

    31 Jul31 July 15:46

    Not particularly in Ipswich but you could use it as a base to explore some other bits of East Anglia. There are some nice little places around there e.g. Dedham

  • the real harry1 says:

    31 Jul31 July 20:43

    not really, couple of Indian & Chinese restaurants

    not too far from Cambridge

• Mark e says:

  31 Jul31 July 16:17

  Slightly O/T – obtaining points by the ‘points and cash trick’

  I’ve noticed some variation on how much you can ‘buy’ points depending on hotel used. Using the Intercontinentals on Park Lane and the Amsterdam Amstel the values are different.

  Amstel
  5000 45 dollars
  1000 75 dollars
  15000 104 dollars
  20000 130 dollars

  Park Lane
  5000 35 dollars
  1000 65 dollars
  1500 94 dollars
  2000 120 dollars

  Doing a points and cash for 120 dollars then cancelling at Park Lane is the most effective way but a couple of questions spring to mind.

  Is there a better value location to do this trick at? Was the Amstel rates the same as Park Lane once? Is there a trend here from IHG to put all of the points and cash rates up?

  • HayMow says:

    31 Jul31 July 17:53

    The P+C rates seem to be varying a lot hotel to hotel even in the same town. Your $120 for 20k equates to $30 for 5k which is the best I’ve seen earlier today, eg. for Crowne Plaza Annapolis & some others. So if you didn’t want/need to buy 20k you could get 5/10/15k at the same rate from that hotel

    • Mark e says:

      1 Aug1 August 07:33

      Many thanks

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