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I decided to use my Creation “refunded” IHG free night on a short stay in the Kimpton Edinburgh. Not bad as the cash prices were around £370. For the next night, the Kimpton was looking for 63,000, but luckily I had I had 56,980 points left in my account.
Comparing all the different ways of boosting my account by 7,000 points, I settled for transferring 7,000 points from my wife’s account. Not an instantaneous process, but a few days later IHG sent me an email to say the points had arrived.
I logged in to make the booking only to find that the points price had now gone up to 64,000, so my question is:
Is there a cheap way to earn 200 IHG points?
Open table booking if you’ve got a restaurant visit coming up soon. Also if you’ve stayed recently check your emails for a boost option
Waiting another few days and see if the price goes down again is an option.
Ringing up IHG to book and seeing if they will comp you the 200 points?
See how much it is on Points+Cash? That’ll make your stash go a bit further.
There is a wider lesson here though which is that if you really want to play the IHG dynamic pricing to your advantage you need some headroom in your points balance to always allow you to book an additional night at a lower price BEFORE you cancel the existing booking for that same night.
Re OpenTable, dare I say if desperate book a table at lunchtime today and get yourself there asap.
Why didn’t you look at the points + cash options?
You can always find a country that cheaper to book with points + cash options then cancel the booking.
Why didn’t you look at the points + cash options?
Agreed. P+C almost always works out as a better value per point.
Here’s an example from the IC Baku for a 4 night booking
Cash = $852 (refundable rate)
Points only – 112k=0.76c (0.6p/point)
P+C 92k & $128=0.79c (0.62/point)
P+C 72k & $256 = 0.83c (0.65p/point
P+C 52k & $384=0.9c (0.71p/point)Points + Cash options effectively means buying 5000 points for £28 (ie .56p per points) as you have to pay £28 + 59,000
Just to explain a little bit more. until a couple of years ago I was IHG ambassador status earning and spending a lot of points each year. However, I moved across to Hilton Diamond for guaranteed lounge access and now I dont expect to earn any more IHG points.
Any less than 20,000 IHG points are effectively orphans, so spending £28 as part of points+cash just to get my 200 seems excessive.
I looked up the IHG / Opentable link, and unfortunately each dinner earns only 150 points. Still 2 dinners is the most likely route for small amounts.
My trip is not until next May so I do have a time to think about it, and maybe the dynamic price will drop. Certainly other nights around my target date are selling for only 55k points so there is a chance
Quick update – the dynamic price went back down to 63,000 overnight so my patience paid off!
I’m glad it worked out for you.
Actually I noticed on another thread that Hilton do the dynamic points levels based on dollar prices, so the changes may just have been due to currency fluctuations.
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