Get 20 Nectar points per £1 spent at IHG hotels with Nectar Connect

Nectar has a ‘card linked offers’ programme called Nectar Connect.

This allows you to earn Nectar points (and therefore Avios) when you link your credit and debit card details to your Nectar account and spend at participating retailers.

What is good about Nectar Connect is that it doubles up with other deals, such as American Express statement credit offers.

We wrote a long introductory article on Nectar Connect here. The reason we don’t cover it more is that, if you read the small print, you are required to give Nectar a huge amount of access to your financial data.

Nectar accesses all of the transaction history on your linked card. In fact:

“After you link your payment card account(s) to Nectar as part of Nectar Connect we receive between 6 to 36 months of your historical transaction data, depending on your payment card.”

Nectar will NOT just be using your card data to award you points from participating retailers.  It will be actively mining ALL of your credit card spending information to find ways of pushing new deals at you.

The only upside is that, under FCA rules, you need to renew your permission every 90 days. If you connect your cards to take advantage of a one-off offer, you don’t need to worry about Nectar having access your spending data until you die (or your card expires).

If you are concerned about Nectar harvesting your financial data, you could register a credit or debit card that you rarely use.

If you are not a Nectar Connect member already, you need to know two things:

• you cannot see your offers until you have registered a payment card, so you have to give up your financial history before you find out if you are targetted for the IHG offer

• offers do not appear immediately – you need to wait a couple of days for Nectar to analyse your card data first. The IHG deal may have expired by then.

What is the IHG deal?

The reason I am mentioning Nectar Connect today is that a very generous IHG hotel offer has appeared for many people. You can check your Nectar Connect offers in the Nectar app or on its website.

For the next eight days only, you will earn 20 Nectar points (12.5 Avios) for every £1 you spend at an IHG hotel.

The participating countries are UK, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Austria, The Netherlands and Belgium. All IHG brands (Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, HI Express, Hotel Indigo, InterContinental etc) are included.

You only earn the bonus once and you are capped at 6,000 Nectar points, so a £300 spend.

The timing is excellent for me, because my wife will be paying a €400 bill at a Holiday Inn in Germany at around the time you are reading this. This is 6,000 Nectar points on top of the £75 American Express cashback that the stay will also trigger.

Remember that the offer ends on 7th December. Payment must be taken by this date. A pre-paid room would qualify but only if the hotel charges your card in time. You must opt in to the IHG offer if you are targetted – it is not automatic like some other card linking schemes.

PS. If you don’t have the Nectar American Express credit card, take a look at our review here.

Join me on Simon Calder’s travel podcast

I joined The Independent‘s travel correspondent Simon Calder and his colleague Mick Webb on their podcast ‘You Should Have Been There‘ this week.

Titled ‘A Touch Of Class(es)’, it looks at the world of business class flying and frequent flyer schemes, including discussions about the environmental impact of business travel and free travel, whether premium economy is worth it and thoughts on the best business class products in the sky.

The three of us bounce a lot of ideas around over the 29 minutes, and as a three way discussion it ends up as more of a chat than an interview.

You can listen directly from the website here or search ‘You Should Have Been There‘ wherever you get your podcasts. You are looking for Episode 133 which should be the latest one showing.

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IHG One Rewards update – September 2024:

Get bonus points:

You will earn 3,000 bonus points for every two cash nights you stay between 19th September and 31st December 2024.

Nights to do not need to be consecutive. Read more in our article here and click here to register.

New to IHG One Rewards?  Read our overview of IHG One Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG One Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG One Rewards points, you can buy them here.

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