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Today I looked for a one night in York in August using points – HIE was 60000+. all hotels were £300+ real money.
Does IHG think its customers are daft using their own money. Or is the whole points set up based on corporate spends?
My world is my money – not a mega corporation and IHG points are a bonus on the real money I have spent.
Not sure what this post is getting at really, but there’s always the flipside to consider: unless you only fly economy or have a Hilton Amex, your 30,000 points could have been worth a fair chunk more on a longhaul flight. I only spend my Amex MRs on flights, never hotels, as Amex usually has offers (eg save £50 on £200 for Hilton) which make the money go further and make the points worth even more on flights.
PS – Did you look at Premier Inns (on one end of budget) or Principal York (my favourite hotel there)? 🙂
The Station Hotel was for 6-10 months an IHG property. Premier Hotels in York are never cheap .I mm trying to say IHG has missed the point with its rates . Once upon a time Rewards Points were to reward folks. The world has changed.
Tourists happily pay £300 a night to stay in York in August. They also book on booking.com or whatever and just look for the cheapest headline rate.
Hotel prices are set by the revenue managers of hotels, not by IHG. When hotels are full, IHG will be paying the hotel close to their rack rate, so they certainly won’t be offering cheap redemptions.
0.5p per point seems reasonable not sure what you’re expecting but they’re worth about 0.4p so you’re getting 20% more bang for your buck. Maybe more as points stays are refundable and I don’t know if £300 is prepay or flexible.
Obviously I don’t know what date you’ve picked but a couple random weekends in August I’ve got £133/137 at the 2 HI and £178 Indigo. Points rooms all seem to have gone though.
dupe deleted
The trick is to hold some sort of flexible booking you could live with if you had to, and keep checking right up to the time.
Airline hotel booking schemes are sometimes worth a look, including LCC’s, as sometimes they have a contracted rate that is not seasonal.
Bank holiday weekend perchance?
And given its august there aren’t going to be many on work related stays so yes it is people paying that much
But of course no one is forced to pay that much if they don’t want to.
Outside of Ebor Festival week there is mid-range chain hotel availability at around £100 in central York throughout August. If you are looking at Ebor Festival week – well, for £300/night you can just about stay at The Grand (York’s only 5*) even on that week.
Not sure what the idea that York is £300/night over summer is on about, really.
Edited post
Hotel indigo York top price on august is £244 for one night. Rest of the time it’s average £140
I stayed last November at the Indigo in York. It was about 33k points on average.
If you are going at a super premium time, with a revenue based system now in place at IHG, it will cost super premium points. As has been said already however, 0.5p a point is decent.
At peak dates like this you’ll get better value for Hilton or Marriott points because both those schemes cap the points cost of a redemption (Hilton caps lower than Marriott).
IHG has no cap so hard to beat 0.4-0.5p
According to flyertalk there has been a stealth IHG devaluation in the past few days
Think it was a few weeks ago but it’s got worse I reckon.
Thing is though, the cash pricing also seems so high so my thinking is that they are just testing and it will go down. What do I know though?
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