Why IHG One Rewards ‘bonus points packages’ get you elite status quickly – and almost free

In 2022 IHG launched its new IHG One Rewards loyalty programme, which covers Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, InterContinental, Holiday Inn Express etc.

We were very pleasantly surprised with what IHG had done with IHG One Rewards. Our full review of IHG One Rewards is here. Suddenly, IHG had a loyalty scheme which could genuinely compete with Marriott and Hilton.

The bad news was that to earn top tier Diamond Elite status – which is what you need for free breakfast and the best upgrades – you now require 120,000 status points per year. This is a lot, by any standards.

There is a way of short cutting this, however.

If you are looking to earn status in IHG One Rewards, one of the easiest ways of doing it is by booking ‘bonus points packages’.

There are other ways to get easy status-qualifying points, as this HfP article explains, but the methods are fewer than they were.

When you are search for hotels on ihg.com, you will often – but not always – come across a situation like this when booking a refundable rate:

In this example, you are paying an extra £14 for 3,000 IHG One Rewards points.  This is only slightly above the value of the points – I value an IHG point at 0.4p, so you are getting £12-worth of bonus points.

Note that the 3,000 bonus points are awarded per night.  For a long stay, the bonus will add up.

The number of points and the cash cost are not fixed. Here is an example from Berlin where a Holiday Inn Express is offering 5,000 points per night and where the pricing is higher than the London example above:

These points also qualify for elite status

This is the real reason why you may want to book a ‘bonus points package’.

As well as counting towards booking a free night, the points you earn are ‘elite qualifying’.  This means that they count towards status renewal or promotion.

Because the bonus is per night, you can easily earn a substantial number of points.

Annoying IHG has now removed the explanatory box on the website which confirmed this. At one point there was a ‘?’ check box which said this when clicked:

Does the maths work? Possibly

Let’s imagine that you would naturally earn 50,000 IHG One Rewards base points per year, based on 30 nights at £150 each (£125 excluding VAT, which is $168 at 10 base points per $1).

Based on the costs in the first example above – the one capped at 3,000 points per night – buying 3,000 additional points on 24 of those nights would cost you (£14 x 24) £336.

This would get you 72,000 additional base points which, when added to the 50,000 base points you will earn naturally, triggers top tier Diamond Elite status at 120,000 points.

Here’s the key thing. We value an IHG One Rewards points at 0.4p. This is easy to achieve when redeeming. This means that the 72,000 points you have bought will get you (72,000 x 0.4p) £288 of future hotel stays for which you paid £336. Your Diamond Elite status has effectively cost you £48.

If you are smarter on your redemptions and can average 0.5p per IHG point when redeeming, the 72,000 points you purchased will get you £360 of free stays. You’ve made a £24 profit on the £336 you spent and earned Diamond Elite.

Remember one thing though ….

When you read about IHG One Rewards, you will see references to guaranteed club lounge access and guaranteed ‘confirmed in advance’ suite upgrades.

These are NOT status benefits. They are ‘Milestone Rewards’, triggered when you do a specific number of nights. The key guaranteed benefit of Diamond Elite is free breakfast with the potential for ‘if available’ upgrades.

Whilst buying bonus points packages via the route we explain above IS a good way of getting IHG One Rewards status, it does not unlock all of the benefits of the programme. To earn Milestone Rewards – explained in this HfP article – you need to do ‘heads in beds’.