IHG One Rewards devalues redemptions at top hotels

IHG One Rewards has devalued redemptions at its leading hotels on peak nights.

This change won’t impact you if your ideal redemption is the Holiday Inn Express in Sheffield, but you will be hit if InterContinental Paris Le Grand was your goal.

Let’s take a look at what happened.

IHG One Rewards has revenue based redemptions. In most cases, you will get around 0.4p per point based on the current hotel cash price.

However …. all hotels have a points cap. On peak nights, when cash prices are high, the cap kicks in and you can get well above 0.4p.

The caps at IHG’s leading brands seem to have increased sharply.

InterContinental Park Lane (image above), for example, was previously capped at 120,000 points per night. This meant that if the price went beyond (120,000 x 0.4p) £480, give or take, you were getting more than 0.4p per point.

Take a look at this:

For the priciest night in July, the hotel costs a whopping 179,000 IHG One Rewards points.

Old timers will remember that it wasn’t too long ago (15 years?) that all InterContinental hotels were capped at 30,000 points per night.

The cash price on that night is £680. This works out at 0.38p per point which is about right.

Here’s InterContinental London Park Lane for the whole of July:

I couldn’t find a date higher than £680 / 179,000 points. However, the cap appears to be set at 250,000 points per night. Here’s Regent The Carlton Cannes in July:

You’ll see rooms at 250,000 points virtually every day. Cash rates are above £1,000, so the cap appears to have kicked in. You are now getting more than 0.4p per IHG One Rewards points.

Conclusion

Overnight, IHG One Rewards appears – to all intents and purposes – to have become a pure revenue based redemption scheme.

It always was, of course, for anyone staying at hotels outside super-peak dates, but it wasn’t too hard to get a better-than-average result. No longer.

The issue with what IHG has done is the same one that hurts Accor Live Limitless, which is also revenue based. For years the brands have been buying luxury chains because they incentivise people to stay in their cheaper hotels with the goal of an occasional luxury trip. The goal is now out of reach in many cases.

In general, we like IHG One Rewards as a loyalty programme. If you do ‘heads in beds’ then the Milestone Rewards you can earn (suite upgrades from 20 nights in a year, annual lounge pass from 40 nights) are great. It’s the points side of the programme which has been rapidly losing its appeal in recent years.

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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.

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