Breakfast for 2 rooms as welcome amenity

[Scottpat78]

I’ve had mixed experiences this week at Indigo hotels…

3 nights cash booking in Dundee for 2 rooms / 2 people per room. Selected breakfast as welcome amenity and was handed 2 vouchers for 2 people each with my checkout date written in. Perfect.

3 nights cash booking in Chester for 2 rooms / 2 people per room. Again I selected breakfast as welcome amenity and I was handed 2 vouchers for 2 people each but only had the next days date – which I didn’t notice at the time.

At breakfast on first morning in Chester, the server took my vouchers and said I had to speak to reception for more vouchers. When I chatted to reception, they said that they made a mistake when I checked in, and I should only have had 1 voucher for 2 people (so 1 room) for the 3 days. Since I had already used 2 x 2 people for breakfast on the first day, they then only gave me breakfast for 2 people on the 2nd day.

I had to pay for breakfast for 2 on the second day then I would have had to pay for all of us on the 3rd day. We actually skipped breakfast on the 3rd day for a Starbucks on the road as we decided to get off early instead of paying £80 for breakfast.

I thought (perhaps wrongly) that the welcome amenity applied to each room booked? I’ve had free breakfast for 2 rooms without issue in multiple IHG hotels this year. Have I just been lucky or was this experience wrong? I could understand breakfast for 2 max per room, but we had 2 rooms.

[Anna]

The Diamond amenity is for the member plus one guest so anything more than that is at the hotel’s discretion. This is the case with most hotel chains; some properties are more generous than others. I suspect some IHG hotels are sticking strictly to the rules as it’s a new benefit which presumably is costing them money!

Which hotels have you got the multiple breakfasts at? Were they properties where it’s definitely not included as standard?

[aseftel]

The terms say breakfast for (up to) two and the second person must be staying in the same room as the member.

Available for Member and one guest registered to the same room for each night of stay

https://www.ihg.com/content/gb/en/customer-care/member-tc/2nd-page

[Scottpat78]

Thanks, I looked for the T&C and couldn’t find it!

I’ve had breakfast for 4 people in 2022 at Hotel Indigo Durham & Dundee plus IC in San Francisco & LA. They were all 2 x rooms with 2 people per room. Mixture of cash and points bookings.

[Anna]

There was a point where the Durham property was including breakfast on all cash bookings, I think we got this around this time last year before it was free for Diamonds.
If it was for each room people would be booking multiple rooms and getting loads of free brekkies for their parties!

[Scottpat78]

Cheers – yep I can see how it could be abused!