IHG, the parent company of hotels such as the Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Kimpton and Intercontinental, among others, recently launched their end of year promotion. You can register as of September 24th and the offer runs until January 31, 2020. You have to register and book all eligible stays before December 15, 2019, and it’s necessary to register before your stay to receive any bonus points.
So what’s the promotion, and how does it stack up to other IHG offerings?
- Earn 1,000 bonus points for your first IHG stay
- Earn 2X bonus points for your second IHG stay
- Earn 3X bonus points for your third IHG stay
- Earn 4X bonus points for your fourth, and each subsequent IHG stay
While IHG is promoting this as a 4X Bonus Points offer, you’ll need to stay four times to start receiving 4X bonus points.
If you’re a frequent IHG guest, this is a way for you to rack up the points. It’s much better than last fall’s promotion, where you only received double points on all stays after your first (for which you didn’t earn any bonus points at all).
For an infrequent guest, this deal is not great. It’s actually worse than the offers from competing chains, like Hilton, which currently has an offer that provides double base points on all stays. You’d have to stay at least three times at IHG to earn as many bonus points from their promotion as you’d earn with Hilton.
Another thing I find disappointing with the IHG offer is that you need to book your stay by December 15th to earn any bonus points even though the promotion runs until January 30th. If you’re looking to book any last-minute stays for the end of December 2019 or January 2020, no points for you.
The landing page to sign up for the offer is: https://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/deals/member-offers/4x
The full terms and conditions of the offer can be found at https://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/deals/member-offers/4x/tc.html
Final Thoughts
This is the first IHG offer in a while to break away from the “Accelerate” formula and go for a straight bonus-point structure. Even a similar bonus points promotion last fall provided a chance to earn extra points by using the IHG app or paying with the IHG credit card.
I’d been underwhelmed with my recent Accelerate offers, so I didn’t bother to try and achieve them. I’m wondering if I wasn’t the only one who felt that way and the marketing team noticed that interest in them was starting to fade away.
Will they come back again or will IHG continue to stick with straight forward bonus points promos for the future? Only time will tell.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
1 comment
Although I am an IHG Rewards Club member, I was unable to register for this promotion per the following disclaimer on the site: “Many offers are only available to IHG Rewards Club members who receive a specific, targeted communication from IHG.”