The IHG Hotel chain has been all over the chart with their hotel promotions over the last few years. Their recent promotions have been duds, like the just finished Double Points Plus More or the Easy Like Summer promotion before it. it looks like IHG is going back to the well and bringing back the popular Accelerate promo but giving it a new name, Free Nights. Faster. Or maybe it’s called Reward Nights Faster because that’s the name of the promotion on the email after I registered.
Don’t get me wrong, I loved the old Accelerate promos because of how they worked. It just seems that now IHG has managed to suck all of the fun out of them and I’m not impressed.
The thing about the old Accelerate promotions was that they actually encouraged you to try to take advantage of them. You had a series of tasks to complete and you could try to figure out the best way to complete them with the least amount of effort. For one of the promotions, I earned an extra 25,000 points by making one stay, paying with my IHG card and buying points.
The New Promotion
First, the important details. You can register for the promotion today and until March 15, 2019. Procrastinators beware, as no retroactive bonus points will be awarded for stays prior to registration. Each offer must be completed between January 15, 2019, and April 30, 2019 (both dates inclusive). IHG has made signing up for this promotion much easier as I received an email with a “one-click” confirmation. If you haven’t received one of these emails, you can register at this link.
The offers Sharon and I received for this current round seem similar but are actually quite different when you give a closer look. Both of us have the opportunity to earn over 50,000 points, which is enough for a free night at a hotel like the Kimpton Gray in Chicago.
I can earn up to a total of 53,550 points.
I have five tasks:
- Earn 6,600 points when booking two Bonus Points packages
- Earn 2,800 points when staying at two IHG hotels
- Earn 19,200 points when staying at three different IHG brands
- Earn 5,600 points when staying over two weekends (including a Saturday night)
- Earn 1,500 points when booking and paying for a stay with my IHG card
If I complete all five offers, I’ll get an additional 17,850 points.
Looking at this, I’d need to stay at least five nights over three stays (two of which need to be two-night weekend stays). I’d have to book a bonus package twice, which isn’t a terrible thing, just not money I’d usually spend to buy IHG points. None of these are really worth trying to complete unless we were planning to stay at IHG hotels already.
Here’s Sharon’s offer where she can earn a slightly less 50,200 points:
- Earn 6,600 points when booking two Bonus Points packages
- Earn 2,800 points when staying at two IHG hotels
- Earn 28,800 points when staying at three IHG brands
- Earn 12,000 points when booking a stay of four or more nights
What’s intriguing is that this offer has no kicker bonus for completing all the offers. The four-night stay would be the toughest one to complete as it does nothing to fulfill the other tasks so we’ll leave that one out. We could stay for three single night stays in three different IHG brands, booking a bonus package and earn 37,400 extra points. Valuing those points at 0.005 cents each, that’s $187. It’s enough of a bonus where I looked to see if it made sense for us to try to accomplish it (and it didn’t).
Of our offers, the only one that could be accomplished with a single stay was my task of paying with my IHG card and that was only paying 1,500 points.
I’m glad to see IHG coming back with interesting Accelerate, I mean Free Nights Faster, offers. Hopefully, your laundry lists of achievements are easier to complete than ours.
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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary
