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IHG reduces Spire Elite qualifying points target, making the Premium credit card interesting

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As we wrote on Friday, IHG Rewards Club has reduced the qualification threshold for its top tier Spire Elite status.

Spire Elite usually requires you to earn 75,000 base points in a calendar year.  For 2020, this is reduced to 55,000 base points.  Alternatively, you can qualify with 55 nights vs the usual 75 nights.

This table confirms the reduction, and you can see the original on the IHG website here:

IHG reduction in status requirements

Before I go on, remember these two points:

when you qualify or requalify for Spire Elite, you receive a bonus of 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points

points earned for spending on the IHG credit cards – except for sign-up bonuses – count towards status

The IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard is now a good deal for chasing status

I think the £99 IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard is a fantastic product.  That’s why we gave it an ‘Editor’s Choice’ award in the Head for Points 2019 Travel & Loyalty Awards.  Here is the IHG and Creation team collecting it at our winner’s dinner:

IHG CC HFP Awards 2019

The application page for the IHG Rewards Club Premium Mastercard is here.

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 Elite status in IHG Rewards Club for as long as you hold the card.  This is mid-tier, with Spire Elite being the top level.  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.  The only reason to use the card abroad would be to work towards your free night voucher or earn additional IHG elite 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 45.1% variable including the £99 fee, based on a notional £1200 credit limit

Note that the free night voucher only appears at the end of your card year, irrespective of how quickly you spend £10,000.  If you want to cancel the card without paying for a 2nd year, you need to ensure that NO transactions are made on the card between your anniversary date and the date the voucher appears.  You can then call Creation to cancel and the £99 fee will be waived.

There are two minor restrictions on the free night voucher – it can’t be used at the handful of Regent hotels and it can’t be used at the Las Vegas or Macau casino InterContinental Alliance properties.

Which is the best IHG Rewards Club Mastercard?

Let’s look at how you can get Spire Elite status

Let’s assume that you are keen to get Spire Elite status in IHG Rewards Club.  In the most extreme scenario, you won’t do a single IHG cash stay this year and will earn all of your base points from the Premium Mastercard.

You spend £27,500 on the Premium Mastercard before the end of 2020

This gets you 55,000 IHG Rewards Club points

This triggers Spire Elite status

This triggers the bonus of 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points

£27,500 of spending has earned you 80,000 IHG Rewards Club points.

I value an IHG point at a conservative 0.4p.  This means 80,000 points are worth £320.

You are getting a return of (£320 / £27,500) 1.16% on your £27,500.  This is very good for a Mastercard or Visa.

That’s not all, of course.

Because you have spent over £10,000, you will also receive a free night voucher at the end of the year.  Let’s assume you redeem this at an InterContinental on a peak night and get £250 of value.  This is an extra 2.5% return on the first £10,000 of spending.

If you blend the two rewards together, you are getting £320 of points plus £250 of free room, total £570, for spending £27,500.  This is an overall return of 2.1%.  

This ignores the value of having Spire Elite status for the remainder of 2020 and all of 2021.

Note that the points must hit your IHG Rewards Club account in 2020 to trigger your status upgrade.  This means that you need to be aware of when your final statement of the year is generated.

There is, of course, the £99 annual fee to consider.  However, you receive a sign-up bonus of 20,000 IHG Rewards Club points (which do not count towards status) which virtually offsets the fee.

Conclusion

This isn’t a strategy for everyone.  However:

if you can easily spend £27,500 on a Mastercard by the end of 2020 and

you fancy the idea of having top-tier IHG Rewards Club Spire Elite status

….. then this is something you should think about.

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

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Category

IHG One Rewards

Comments (46)

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

  • Matt says:
    16 Mar16 March 04:38

    Incorrect Rob. I used the voucher for a free night at The Venetian Las Vegas last year. You need to call them to redeem it.

  • jil says:
    16 Mar16 March 05:23

    Is creation still considering Revolut top up as cash advance and charging interest?

    • @mkcol says:
      16 Mar16 March 06:13

      Yes 😟

      • r* says:
        16 Mar16 March 07:19

        Where/when does the charge show if creation is used with revolut? I didnt see any cash advance fee listed?

        • Andrew L says:
          16 Mar16 March 07:33

          No cash advance fee is charged, just interest which is added to your account on the next statement date.

          • Alan says:
            16 Mar16 March 09:10

            If they’re not charging cash advance fee then paying off the amount immediately to minimise interest should work. Is it for definite there’s no cash advance fee?

        • Anna says:
          16 Mar16 March 07:34

          I think it only shows a on your next statement.

          • Andrew L says:
            16 Mar16 March 13:14

            Yes, definitely no cash advance fee from Creation when topping up Revolut account, just interest at the rate of 0.20% per day.

    • StevieKicks says:
      16 Mar16 March 12:09

      Have you tried topping up Freetrade with IHG through Curve?

    • Aston100 says:
      16 Mar16 March 13:21

      A couple of days ago, a few people replied on another thread to say you can add a few hundred a week in batches.
      Yet, the replies here are suggesting there will be charges if doing that.

      • Andrew L says:
        16 Mar16 March 20:22

        The charges for topping up Revolut accounts was introduced in late January.

  • letBAgonesbe says:
    16 Mar16 March 07:24

    Can I get the premium card if I have the normal one?
    Can I get the bonus on both?

    • Andrew L says:
      16 Mar16 March 07:34

      Yes.

    • Rob says:
      16 Mar16 March 08:45

      There is an unwritten rule which seems to say you can only have each card (the whole card, not just the bonus) once. You CAN have both. Whether you can have both together is unclear but some people seem to manage it.

      • TGLoyalty says:
        16 Mar16 March 08:53

        I’m currently holding both cards.

        @Genghis has held the white twice and received the bonus twice I think he mentioned 18m-2yr gap between applications.

      • Doug M says:
        16 Mar16 March 09:40

        FYI: I had free originally and then applied for and got the paid one. Having got the paid one I decided to cancel the free one. Spending on the free when you have the paid made no sense.
        However, getting the free first had a big credit limit, much less on the paid one. After closing free one managed to get the paid one increased by a couple of £2K.
        Just before the recent increased offer on the free one I applied again, thinking that the bonus was easy points. I was refused, but it was suggested to try again in 6 months. I’m not usually refused credit cards.

      • The Urbanite says:
        16 Mar16 March 14:29

        I have both the free and premium cards. The premium card is at maximum possible spending capacity so the free one comes in handy for bringing in a few extra points each month.

        Annoyingly the free card has the higher spending limit.

        Wouldn’t dream of cancelling either.

  • Cam says:
    16 Mar16 March 07:43

    Considering the limited benefits of Spire Elkte, I don’t think this is worth chasing on spend alone. However, if a significant portion of the spend is foreign or IHG (thus 4 points/£1), coupled with other earnings (eg, the 150 points per booking on OpenTable), this means that Spurs elite becomes attainable at far more moderate stay levels.

    For example:
    £8,000 U.K. spend = 16,000 points
    £3,500 non-UK/IHG spend = 14,000 points
    $2,300 IHG stays = 23,000 points [excluding CC spending, which is counted above]

    Other (OpenTable, car rental, etc) = 2,000 points

    The lurking question is the value of Spire elite, outside of the 25,000 points. IMHO, it’s not that much more than Platinum.

    I wouldn’t try for it on spend alone, but I have a chance based on a spending pattern like that above.

    • Doug M says:
      16 Mar16 March 09:44

      Foreign spend = 3% charge. Can (almost) never make a good case for paying 3% for points. Maybe if you need a small amount to trigger a bonus, but not general.

    • The Urbanite says:
      16 Mar16 March 14:31

      I know it’s often said that Spire Elite is of limited utility but I don’t see this myself. I know it’s not policy but I often get upgrades and free lounge access (where available) and breakfast at Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, sometimes upgrades at Intercontinental too.

    • Andrew L says:
      16 Mar16 March 20:28

      Spire Elite membership is getting more valuable now since all Crowne Plaza’s in the UK with a Club Lounge offer unlimited access to it to all Spire Elite tier holders at check in.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      17 Mar17 March 00:43

      I find spire elite useful. Get decent upgrades on all stays including suites and lounge access in nearly all (non IC) hotels that have one

      It also helped not so long ago to not get walked after I made a last min Late night booking and the hotel was oversold. I’m sure the other person was going to no show anyway by then but Front desk assured me as a spire I was getting a key to a room, was an upgraded too.

  • meta says:
    16 Mar16 March 07:55

    O/T but related. Anyone knows if there is official policy regarding Ambassador free night vouchers?

    I have one expiring end of June which I was planning to use at Intercontinental Singapore which now I won’t due to Singapore travel restrictions. I could possibly use it at Intercontinental Lyon end of May if things get better, but otherwise have no other uses.

    • TGLoyalty says:
      16 Mar16 March 08:08

      The status has been extended 3 months (or should have been)

      I’d wait for a few weeks for the dust to settle then contact ambassador email address to ask about a 3 month extension to the voucher

      • TGLoyalty says:
        16 Mar16 March 08:09

        *before anyone gets excited I mean on the immediate demand for customer services time due to cancelled plans.

        • meta says:
          16 Mar16 March 08:21

          Thanks.
          Yes, I am not contacting anyone via phone for anything non-urgent and that means 72 hours!

  • Tony says:
    16 Mar16 March 09:13

    I have both cards although use the white rarely but it was the one I got first.
    Find the black card works really well for me and had ten days in Jordan over Xmas and the New Year using points and voucher at a mixture of Crown Plaza and Intercontinental Hotels where I secured room upgrades at both.

  • Colin JE says:
    16 Mar16 March 09:57

    What’s been your experience of using the free night vouchers so far? My anniversary was in January, had spent over 10k, confirmed on the c/card page counter, but it’s still not showing on my IHG account.
    Also, I gather you have to book using free night vouchers as a separate booking. A booking I’m looking at costs more if I book it as separate nights. Has anyone used a voucher as part payment toward a multi night booking?

    • Anna says:
      16 Mar16 March 11:27

      Have you tried googling “how to use your IHG free night voucher”? There are loads of blogs out there (sorry Rob!) which post articles on getting the most out of award nights.

      • Colin JE says:
        16 Mar16 March 15:22

        Thanks Anna, that did bring up a helpful onemileatatime.com blog post. It doesn’t explain why I’ve still not got my voucher 14 months after my card was issued, but at least I now know that the free night voucher bookings come from the same inventory as points stays. The hotel I’d wanted to use it hasn’t got any inventory left so I guess I’ll have to wait until another occasion.

        • EwanG says:
          16 Mar16 March 16:27

          @Colin. In your Creation account (on a desktop) you will see one which has ‘Annual’ in the title, presumably this confirms spend of >£10k in the year. The free night entitlement should get passed from Creation to IHG. If you go into your IHG account (again on a desktop) at the top left under ‘Missing Points’ and above ‘Account Activity’ it should show “1 free night(s)”. If it’s not there, first port of call will be Creation to confirm they sent it to IHG.
          Yes from what I can see the CC inventories for the free night and rewards night are now identical – in the past I was able to find some differences. Remember the expiry of the cert is the date you need to book by – your reservation can be at a date after expiry, but once it is expired if you cancel you don’t get it back.

      • Colin JE says:
        16 Mar16 March 15:34

        US blog sites say there is a 40k points cap on the free night certificate (the one issued with the Chase card). Presumably that is not the case for UK issued vouchers?

  • Mike G says:
    16 Mar16 March 10:50

    When I was travelling a lot I made it to Spire Elite, there was no discernable difference between it and Platinum Elite. If you get it, great, but definitely don’t chase it for the non-existent benefits.

    • Andy says:
      16 Mar16 March 11:23

      Agreed. In terms of room upgrades it seems to be the same. The one place where it seemed to be different was China, where on arrival I got the drinks voucher and another voucher that was a credit for food & beverage, and the Spire Elite voucher was a higher value then the Platinum. Probably not worth chasing status for an additional $5 value per stay at Chinese hotels though.

    • Colin JE says:
      16 Mar16 March 15:26

      I’ve always got lounge access at Crowne Plazas with the Spire Elite, even with a standard room, and sometimes a nice upgrade to an exec room. Not sure if you’d get that with Platinum. Though, as Rob often says, nothing’s guaranteed so it has less value.

      • Andrew L says:
        16 Mar16 March 20:33

        Free Club Lounge access is now standard across all Crowne Plaza’s in the UK, but only for Spire Elite tier.

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