Check your IHG Milestone Rewards if you did a mattress run

One of the (many) improvements to IHG One Rewards in 2022 was the introduction of Milestone Rewards.

We outlined how IHG One Rewards Milestone Rewards work here.

These give you additional rewards based on the number of nights you stay in a calendar year. For example, I hit 20 nights and chose a suite upgrade award, which is good for up to five nights on a 2023 stay. This isn’t bad for a modest number of nights.

The sweet spot is arguably at 40 nights, where you can choose an annual club lounge pass. This is valid for the current year and all of the following year. It offers great value if you stay at a lot of hotels with lounges and if you can trigger it fairly early.

It is important to note that Milestone Rewards are totally separate from status. If you do a promotion or status match to get Gold, Platinum or Diamond status you do NOT receive the Milestone Rewards which would have been triggered ‘the hard way’. This is a clever way of limiting what is given to people who get status as a credit card benefit.

Milestone Rewards are so attractive that you may have been tempted to do a mattress run at the end of 2022, when hotel rates were rock bottom, to hit a target. If so, you could be in trouble.

There are multiple reports of IHG counting all stays which posted in 2023 – irrespective of when the stay was – as happening in 2023 for the purposes of Milestone Rewards. Some people will be OK with this, but clearly if you were doing the stay purely for the 2022 Milestone Reward then you won’t be.

The IHG call centre can fix this if you are persuasive enough, it seems, but keep an eye on your account if you are in this situation.

You can learn more about Milestone Rewards on this page of ihg.com – scroll down.

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IHG One Rewards update – April 2025:

Get bonus points: IHG is not currently running a global promotion.

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.