The next major IHG Rewards promotion has recently been announced. If you foresee any hotel stays between Sept. 1 and Dec. 31 you should perhaps spend a few moments to see what this promo entails for you. After a long drought, I’m quite pleased with my offers. Register for it here and maybe you will score a good one as well.
IHG Rewards
IHG brands include Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Crowne Plaza, InterContinental, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, Indigo and Kimpton along with a few others.
Accelerate Promotions
The new promo is actually called, “Make Every Stay Count” but it’s one of the “Accelerate” promotions offered every few months by IHG. What makes it quite different from other hotel loyalty program promotions is that requirements vary greatly between members.
The first promotion of this type came out in autumn of 2013 and was called the “Big Win”. My targeted offers were fantastic. The biggest hurdle was a requirement that I stay in 2 of 6 designated cities. So, I planned a short-haul Aeroplan trip with a stopover in Montreal along with a few days in Washington. I completed my tasks at a low cost and it was a great trip. The result, including the regular points earned from the stays, earned me enough points for several free nights in London at a well located Holiday Inn that was otherwise way out of my budget. Memories…
Recent Promotions
I always register all of my immediate family members to see what kind of offers are available whether we have travel plans or not. I know there is some kind of algorithm that determines who gets what but it’s still quite puzzling. My last few have been very poor, including a plain old double points offer. That’s not very exciting.
Assessing Value
My benchmark for what constitutes a good set of offers is one that will give me a return approaching 10,000 points per night in the end. That’s a relatively high threshold. Others will have different standards depending on how they value the points or how often they stay at IHG hotels compared to other chains.
The IHG PointBreaks list offers free nights at select hotels for 5000, 10,000 or 15,000 points per night. I like to think that each night’s stay in the Accelerate promotion would give me enough points for a PB night somewhere in the future. The next list should be released soon – likely on Monday.
If you read some IHG members’ reactions online you will see a range of comments from “this is rubbish, IHG is dead to me” to “easy peasy, IHG loves me”. Unfortunately you will find more of the former kind than the latter but I try to take some comfort in knowing there are still a few people out there receiving great offers. This time mine is not too bad despite the lack of a completion bonus. Three one night stays would get me 36,000 total points if two are booked via the IHG app and two are at different Holiday Inn Express hotels.
My Accelerate Offers
A Few Reminders
The deadline for registration is October 18, 2019.
Read the terms and conditions for each offer very carefully.
Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express are separate brands.
Reward nights (including points+cash nights) don’t count as stays for other tasks in the promotion.
The IHG website has a history of glitches so check back again around September 1st in case your offers may have changed. There are reports of some individuals getting a lone offer of 1000 points for a single stay and nothing else. That seems too weird to be true. It certainly wouldn’t motivate the average traveller to move their forthcoming stays to IHG.
Final Thoughts
I’m not sure if I’ll achieve any of my promotion targets but at least it’s within the realm of possibility. Part of the fun of travel planning is figuring out how to stretch the value of a dollar and capitalizing on these points promotions can be a good way to do it.
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