How does the new IHG Rewards points pricing vary at the same hotel?

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• Crafty says:

  9 Apr9 April 08:48

  Good analysis – bad system. This will turn off a chunk of people from bothering with the scheme.

• Anna says:

  9 Apr9 April 08:48

  Some hotels seem to have just increased points prices full stop. I’ve been tracking the IC and Kimpton Nine Zero in Boston for next March and they’ve both increased by 20k and 25k respectively (to 60k and 85K). Fortunately I should have 3 cc free nights to book all but one night with which will feel like pretty good value when I come to redeem them!

  • ChrisC says:

    9 Apr9 April 11:28

    Oh I liked the Nine Zero when I stated there a couple of years ago.

    Good location very close to the common and the T.

    Nice rooms and lovely staff.

• Froggitt says:

  9 Apr9 April 08:52

  “Unfortunately, IHG does not have a calendar on its website which shows you the cash and points price in the same format as I do above.”

  Surely there is a clever HfP member who can scrape all this data daily into a table, that Rob can then publish here?

  • Rob says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:35

    Changes every day though …

    • Froggitt says:

      9 Apr9 April 10:30

      Scrape the data overnight, and automate its publication.

• Paul Pogba says:

  9 Apr9 April 09:01

  With these parameters you’re getting a mean redemption value of 0.34p, a devaluation of 15% on the HfP benchmark of 0.4p. I might try and run the numbers on a US hotel where there are fewer restrictions on travel. The HI Camden is probably experiencing suppressed demand due to the lack of international tourists and domestic visitors.

  • tony says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:25

    I did that with a random HIEX in Pittsburg next week. Was 14k points every night except Saturday when it was 17k. Rate was a static $140 a night before taxes.

  • N says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:26

    the mean is meaningless

    nobody is staying at these hotels for 30 days

    • Paul Pogba says:

      9 Apr9 April 09:38

      It’s a representation, for some people a random full week is what they’d use the points for, for me I’m more likely to redeem points at the weekend. Filtering out Friday, Saturday, Sunday redemptions I get an average value of 0.28p.

  • Rob says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:34

    That’s not what 0.4p means.

    Our 0.4p is ‘what you can reasonably expect to get on a good day’ – ie you should expect to see less than 0.4p a lot of the time, and be happy pulling the trigger at 0.4p on a redemption because it is top of the range.

    On that definition, nothing changes.

    If the average across 30 days was 0.4p then I would be increasing my target valuation to 0.5p.

    • Paul Pogba says:

      9 Apr9 April 10:07

      I thought in previous articles you’d said you were a buyer of points at 0.4p as you should be able to beat that at the right properties. The averages look like it’s getting harder to beat that 0.4p and thats before you get to the uncertainty discussed in this article. The changes look negative to me but I also don’t see a better alternative for non-Amex spend.

      • TGLoyalty says:

        9 Apr9 April 17:14

        Every single scheme has sweet spots and crap spots.

        You should only use points when the value works for you!

        Im pretty liquid so I won’t redeem unless I’m beating Rob’s valuations by about 10-20% (you earn points on cash plus money back portals)

        • TGLoyalty says:

          9 Apr9 April 17:16

          Or if the additional flexibility is important

          there is value in the fact points bookings are usually fully refundable and cheapest cash rates often aren’t (COVID-19 has changed that slightly but it won’t last forever)

• Brian W says:

  9 Apr9 April 09:09

  If you run a search for a calendar week, it shows you the average points rate for those 7 days as you state, however, when you click through to the rate selection page there is a link on the left hand side of the page that then shows you the rate for each individual date within that week if you click on it. Saves doing loads of searches this way to achieve a daily breakdown 👌🏻

• Mikeact says:

  9 Apr9 April 09:21

  I guess you’d have to pretty dedicated or plain stupid to “switch hotels each night”.

  • Froggitt says:

    9 Apr9 April 09:25

    I guess you don’t remember the bonus points schemes from around 2010 to 2015……

  • ChrisC says:

    9 Apr9 April 11:32

    The most I’ve done over a weekend is one hotel on a Friday and a second for Saturday and Sunday nights and that was when they had their cumulative target bonus scheme and one of the targets was to stay in 3 separate brands and this was a way of getting me 2 of the 3.

    No way am I taking up valuable holiday time unpacking and packing and schleping around a city to save a few points.

  • The real John says:

    9 Apr9 April 19:45

    I frequently switched hotels every night to renew my Hilton status. It’s not hard if there are two hotels next to each other

    • Rob says:

      9 Apr9 April 20:07

      Was very common back in the ‘faster free nights’ when, for eg, SPG would give you a free night valid anywhere (no limits) for every 5 stays or so.

• David S says:

  9 Apr9 April 10:07

  How could you even design and test a computer programme that does this to the pricing as even amongst the readership there isn’t any consensus on what is trying to be achieved other than p***ing your loyal customer base off

• Aston100 says:

  9 Apr9 April 10:15

  I mentioned something last night in the chat thread.

  Points and also Cash prices are changing daily at some properties I have booked.
  A good example is a property in New York that I have booked for 10 nights on points.
  I have cancelled and rebooked it as 10 individual nights, and saved about 5%
  A couple of the nights dropped by about half whilst others dropped by only 1k or 2k, but others went up by upto 5k, but still led to an overall decrease in points requirement over the 10 nights combined.

  I am going to check prices everyday.
  If individual nights drop in price again, I can cancel and rebook those without having to block cancel the entire booking.
  At present, I have achieved 0.67p per point because the cash prices seem to have no bearing on the points prices, as pointed out in this article.
  I expect to achieve even greater value per point over the coming months if IHG continue to refresh prices by rolling a dice.

  My main takeaway from all this is that all rewards nights bookings need to be booked as a bunch of individual one night bookings and then checked regularly for price changes. Ask the property to combine them all nearer the time.

  • Gavin says:

    9 Apr9 April 10:22

    Quite a lot of work having to check the price every day for several months, and potentially rebook many times! I’m in a similar situation and it’s very annoying, I just want a good value flat rate redemption.

    • Aston100 says:

      9 Apr9 April 13:20

      So what I’ve done is taken a screenshot of the rate breakdown which shows the nightly rates and total price.

      I am running a daily search on that property on those dates and comparing the rate breakdown with my screenshot. This takes under a minute.

      If I spot any dates where the price has dropped, I intend to cancel and rebook just those specific date(s) only. This may take two or three minutes per change, but is worth it in my opinion.

      • Alan says:

        9 Apr9 April 16:19

        Good plan for multinight stays to save checking each one individually 👍

  • ChrisC says:

    9 Apr9 April 11:50

    I checked some of my bookings last night.

    Some of the rates had dropped and some had gone up but TBH nothing excessive a (few thousand either way and I will rebook where the savings are worth it (I’m going to work on at leaat a 1k saving per booking.

    I usually check on a weekly basis. Daily would be too much.

    It;s the cash rates not changing that are puzzling

    In May the de Witt in Amsterdam has cash rate of £157 for a Wed and Thursday night but points are 28k and 54k respectivly giving redemption rates of 0.56 and 0.290 respectivly per night but over 2 nights the rate is 0.383

    I think people need to look at these things in the round i.e. their total stay rather than the per night figures.

    • TGLoyalty says:

      9 Apr9 April 17:17

      I’d be booking points then cash 🙂

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