IHG news: your Accelerate Q2 target viewable, and an interesting IHG / Avis deal

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• Thezoofox says:

  13 Apr13 April 05:17

  I can see my individual targets in the IHG accelerate offer now. Mine total 112,000. I need to stay 28 times for 56,000
  points.

  • Matt says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:33

    I can see my targets too. I have 54,300, and best of all I’ll earn a bonus 11,500 for a single weekend booking I have in May due to triggering the following:
    – 2000 stay once
    – 6000 weekend stay
    – 1500 pay hotel bill using IHG credit card
    – 2000 stay in May

    I assume an existing booking will count?

    Also this will be my first time using the ambassador certificate. I’ll be using it at The Barclay New York and I’m intrigued by how it’s going to because Flyertalk people are brutal about this place!

    • Matt says:

      13 Apr13 April 07:38

      Oh and does anyone know when you use the IHG premium to pay for an IHG hotel abroad, do you earn 4 or 8 points per £? I ask because you get 4 for foreign transactions and 4 for IHG spend, so does this aggregate?

      • Liz says:

        13 Apr13 April 07:40

        Only 4 pts

      • Rob says:

        13 Apr13 April 08:29

        4

    • Genghis says:

      13 Apr13 April 07:38

      “I assume an existing booking will count”. Don’t assume. Read the terms closely. I’ll be rebooking some stays this weekend to benefit from Accelerate.

      • Rob says:

        13 Apr13 April 08:29

        App booking targets require rebooking usually. Online bookings do not. Usually.

      • Scott says:

        13 Apr13 April 11:14

        This weekend? Won’t you have to wait until May?

    • Genghis says:

      13 Apr13 April 07:39

      @Matt. You earn max 4 / GBP.

    • Stuart says:

      13 Apr13 April 07:55

      There is nothing in the T&Cs that I can see which says booked or booking day just “consumed” within the period

      • Genghis says:

        13 Apr13 April 08:27

        IHG seem to have tidied up quite a few of them to just “stay” but found this for my weekend one, “Number of bonus points listed above will be awarded after member books and consumes required number of Qualifying Stays, including a Saturday Stay and for a minimum of 2 nights, between 1 May 2018 and 31 July 2018 (both dates inclusive) at…”

      • Matt says:

        13 Apr13 April 08:31

        Hi liz and Genghis thank you for letting me know about the max 4 points earning. On that basis it won’t be worth putting an expensive foreign hotel on the IHG card just to earn 4 per £ and 1500 accelerate bonus points. Better to use Lloyd’s Avios Amex I think.

      • JamesB says:

        13 Apr13 April 09:20

        @Genghis, can you remember if “minimum of 2 nights” part is new? Until now, 2 consecutive 1 night stays at different hotels over Fri/Sat or Sat/Sun triggered the weekend stay bonus.

      • Genghis says:

        13 Apr13 April 10:15

        @JamesB you’re testing me now! If you really wanted to know I could find out as I save down the T and Cs each time.

      • JamesB says:

        13 Apr13 April 11:14

        @Genghis, thanks but not necessary because the practice might not be consistent with the theory anyway. I have two of those weekend stay challenges so I will likely just book the first as two consecutive 1 night stays and see if anything has changed. If it has then I’ll know to book the second one as a two night stay.

    • Lyn says:

      13 Apr13 April 08:32

      Matt – I agree with Genghis about reading the terms and not assuming an existing booking will count. It may count for some bonuses but not others. In particular, the IHG credit card bonus often requires the booking to be made within the accelerate promotion period. Also, your ambassador weekend stay may count as just one night (for the paid night) rather than a weekend stay.

• John says:

  13 Apr13 April 05:47

  After completing 6 challenges in a row with the minimum necessary nights, the attractiveness of the offers was starting to dry up. I skipped Jan-Apr 2018 completely, and now the current targets are a lot more interesting.

  It boils down to:
  1st night 5500
  bonus points package +6600
  4th night +13200
  5th night +9600
  6th night +42900

  Extra 28800 points available for 3 “weekends” but that would need at least 8 nights.

  • Mike says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:34

    Having not stayed at IHG for nearly a year I appear to have a good one:

    1. Stay once and earn 1,000 bonus points.
    2. stay 4 night(s) and earn 4,000 bonus points.
    3. Book 2 stay(s) with the IHG® App and earn 3,200 bonus points.
    4. Earn 6,600 bonus points when you book 1 Bonus Points Package stay(s) and get to your next reward faster.
    5. Get an IHG® Rewards Club Credit Card and earn 2,000 points.

    Complete 4 of the 5 offers and earn (an additional) 23,200 bonus points.

    Stay once in May and get 1,000 bonus points.

    Looks like I need two stays booked through the app of which at least one is a bonus points stay plus getting the free credit card for 37,000 points if at least one of the stays is in May.

    • Relaxo says:

      13 Apr13 April 06:54

      Having not stayed for nearly a year, my offers are significantly worse every season! This time they want me to complete 5 of 6 offers when only 5 offers in total are showing! Of these , 1 is to join IC Ambassador and another is to complete a vacation package ! WTF!?

• Paul says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:43

  Do existing bookings made with IHG for the Q2 period but prior to having registered for this promotion still count towards it?

  • paulm says:

    13 Apr13 April 06:51

    Depends on the wording of the task. If it just stays stay then should be fine, if it says book and stay then usually needs to be booked in be q2 period.

• rj24 says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:55

  81,300 on offer for me, and the usual ‘Xpoints for Y nights’ offer (28,000 for 14 nights this time around) but also an (imho) unachievable target of ‘20,400 bonus points when you book and complete 14 Your Rate Bonus Point Package stay(s)’ – 14 nights is just about possible, but to make 14 bookings is nigh on impossible.

  It seems as a Spire member, and the more accelerate promos I undertake, the challenges are becoming less and less worth it, unfortunately.

  • shd says:

    13 Apr13 April 08:55

    Isn’t that exactly what you’d expect?

    Spire here, but I’ve been avoiding IHG for the last six months. My Q2 2018 Accelerate is actually quite tempting:

    5 nights, 2 stays booked on the app, 2x HIX = 40k points

• Zoe says:

  13 Apr13 April 06:58

  OT my daughter has just been selected for a summer internship in Zurich and will have a few flights with Swiss, should she join their own frequent flyer scheme or a different one? She also has a Swiss boyfriend so trips to Zurich are not rare. Thanks in advance.

  • Dan says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:03

    Look at wheretocredit.com

    I would probably go with Aegean as they are relatively generous for Swisd flights and have the easiest to achieve *G status.

    • Pangolin says:

      13 Apr13 April 14:24

      The discounted economy bookings on LX will probably only earn 250 miles on A3, and many of the booking classes don’t earn miles at all (including K, L and T).

      • shd says:

        13 Apr13 April 18:24

        If this was my daughter, I’d tell her to forget cash fares and chasing status, save your money and instead buy a bunch of Avios and RFS your way back and forth instead.

  • shd says:

    13 Apr13 April 08:56

    What booking class does she travel in? Miles & More earnings are now beyond dire if you’re flying LH Group airlines in heavily discounted economy.

• Lloyd says:

  13 Apr13 April 07:01

  My accelerate is rubbish for the second time in a row; stay once in May for a bonus 1000, stay once for 1000 then it’s just ‘stay another 3 nights for 7200, stay 3 more for 3000, stay 3 more for 3000, stay 3 more for 3000’ etc. I’m not a heavy hotel user so compared to what others seem to get, my offers are poor. This is exactly what I got last quarter as well.

  • Lumma says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:12

    That’s similar to what I got the last few times, but this time it seems I’ll get 35,000 points if I stay at 2 Holiday Inn Express (with one stay in May, booking through the app and paying with the IHG card)

• Dan says:

  13 Apr13 April 07:01

  Does anyone know whether an IC stay using the Ambassador free weekend night cert should count? I’ve had a variety of experiences with these posting on the past – from posting normally to no points at all (looking at you Shanghai Ruijin).

  • Rob says:

    13 Apr13 April 08:30

    Counts as 1 night but not 2. If it doesn’t email IHG and they fix it.

    • Matt says:

      13 Apr13 April 08:35

      Rob so ambassador free night stay won’t trigger the 6000 points for a weekend stay accelerate target?

      • Rob says:

        13 Apr13 April 09:31

        Some hotels accidentally file AMB certs as 2 nights but, no, you should expect that it won’t trigger it.

        Which, assuming the points are worth £24, might skew your maths over whether to use the voucher.

  • Steve-B says:

    13 Apr13 April 08:36

    Depends on what target you are referring to, but I made a stay last year using my AMB voucher and it counted against, 2 of my Accelerate targets:
    1) to book a weekend stay; and
    2) x nights for a bonus of y points (2 nights were correctly recorded)

    • Kathy says:

      13 Apr13 April 10:29

      Mine too, this year – but I had to properly fight to get the right base points posted for the stay. Had to send a copy of the bill in the end.

• Roger says:

  13 Apr13 April 07:20

  Does skipping Accelerate for one quarter improve any chances of better offer next time?

  • Nick says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:55

    Good question! I skipped Q1 2018 Accelerate as I was concentrating on achieving the HH Diamond status Challenge, so I didn’t have any IHG stays. My Q2 2018 Accelerate is definitely better for achieving the maximum, compared to Q1, but of course that is no proof that it had any real effect. 🙂

  • Mike G says:

    13 Apr13 April 07:55

    Apparently it does, yes.

  • RussellH says:

    13 Apr13 April 10:09

    I only achieved one accelerate target in the current quarter, and that was for using my IHG credit card to book a points stay!
    Did not book IHG because Hilton’s offer in Newcastle is so much better, and that is where we wanted to be.
    Currently in my fifth Hilton this quarter and expecting 12 000 pts for the stay. 🙂
    But, yes, it does seem that my new Accelerate target is more achievable.

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