Earn up to 301,000 bonus IHG Rewards Club points in their new Spring hotel promotion!

UPDATE – OCTOBER 2020:  This article is now out of date, but don’t worry.  We produce a monthly summary of the top hotel bonus point offers – please click HERE or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ menu above. 

Click here for our article on IHG’s current ‘2x’ double points promotion which runs until 15th December 2020. You can register for the offer by clicking here and adding promo code 44480.

IHG Rewards Club, the loyalty scheme for InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn etc, is about to launch its Spring promotion.

You can see full details and register on ihg.com here.

What is the new IHG promotion?

This is a version of the ‘4x’ offer that IHG Rewards Club trialled in December.

It is a very simple one which rewards people who commit a lot of nights.  You don’t necessarily need to be a big spender.

You will:

Earn 1,000 bonus points on your first night after registration

Earn 2 x bonus points on nights 2-5

Earn 3 x bonus points on nights 6-14

Earn 4 x bonus points on nights 15+

The maximum number of bonus points you can receive is 100,000 PER STAGE.  This means that the total number of bonus points you are earn is 301,000, made up of 1,000 + 100,000 + 100,000 + 100,000.

What is the small print?

Here are the details:

The promotion runs from 15th February to 15th May

The last day for registration AND BOOKINGS is 15th April

Existing bookings count

Only paid stays earn bonus points and count towards increasing your bonus multiple – a reward night won’t earn bonus points and will not push you along towards the next step up

Only stays costing $30+ after tax qualify for the promotion – this is unlikely to be an issue for HFP readers in Europe!

For stays of 2+ nights, your rate will be averaged out over your stay and it is the average rate which will be used to calculate your nightly bonus

Only one room per stay counts towards the promotion – you get no credit for multiple rooms at the same hotel on the same night

Bonus points will post in arrears, separately to your base points

What is the bonus worth?

I generally value an IHG Rewards Club point at 0.4p.

Most IHG brands earn 10 base points per $1 (77p) so you are getting (4p / 77p) 5.2% of your after-tax spending back in points.

Under this offer, you will earn back:

An extra 5.2% of your spend on nights 2-5

An extra 10.4% of your spend on nights 6-14

An extra 15.6% of your spend on nights 15+

This is ON TOP of your base points and your status bonus.  At the top end, a Spire Elite member who gets a 100% status bonus would be earning a 26% rebate on nights 15+!

If you have a very expensive IHG stay pencilled in for the end of the promo period, say late April, you may want to think about bulking up your IHG stays beforehand.  If you could push yourself to, say, six nights before that stay it would boost your points sharply.

Is this a good promotion?

Compared to IHG’s ‘Accelerate’ promotions, which have run virtually back to back for the last few years, this is relatively weak.

The downside is that there is no scope for getting an outsize reward.  If the cards fell in your favour, you could trigger a large Accelerate bonus with just a handful of stays as long as you covered your personal brand and night targets.

No-one is going to make out like a bandit here.  On the upside, everyone gets the same goal (heavy stayers tended to get legged over with ‘Accelerate’ with very tough targets) and if you can push a lot of nights to IHG over the three month period you should do nicely.

For someone like me who would have a handful of nights at best, there is less to get excited about.  That said, given that the only realistic competition is Hilton’s ‘2000 bonus points per stay’ – which I value at £6.60 – perhaps IHG has decided it can be cheap this quarter.

One effect of coronavirus, however, is that it will hit the hotel companies and may lead to more aggressive activity later in the year.

You can register for IHG’s new ‘4x’ promotion here.

Even if you have no stays planned yet, I would recommend registering anyway so you don’t get caught out by the 15th April registration deadline.  Remember that stays until 15th May count.

(Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from the major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Promos’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.)