IHG Delays Unannounced Changes To Free Hotel Night Pricing

by joeheg

I wrote at the beginning of January about how IHG’s yearly adjustment of the number of points needed to redeem a free night at close to 700 of their hotels would take effect on January 14th. Not that anyone would know because IHG doesn’t announce these changes any more than publishing the list of hotels changing in value to the Priority Club website.

Well, it seems that the unannounced date the new prices will take effect has changed and is now set to start on January 25, 2019.

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As a reminder, here are the changes taking place on that date:

  • 696 hotels will be changing the price required for a free night
  • 570 hotels are going up in price (Mostly in North America)
  • 126 hotels are going down in price
  • 38 hotels are going from 40,000 to 45,000 points (making them ineligible for the free anniversary night from the IHG Premier credit card.)

You can look at the list of hotels that are changing at this link.

There was no reason provided for the date change but I guess that’s an advantage of not letting anyone know the changes are happening. You can just make changes whenever you want and most people will never notice.

While I’m giving IHG grief about this, you need to take advantage of this delay and book any hotel on this list with your points now, as I doubt they’ll push back the date again. Any reservation made before the price changes take effect will be honored at the old rate, as long as you don’t need to edit or change them. There’s not much risk involved in making reservations, as IHG lets you cancel points reservations within the published cancellation period of the hotel at no additional cost to get your points back.

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While last year IHG changed the prices for many of the hotels we liked to stay at with points. this year we didn’t get hit with any increases that will force us to change our travel plans. But we know that Your Mileage May Vary and while we weren’t affected, any change to the number of points needed could make a huge difference if you were planning to stay at one of these hotels.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

H/T: Loyalty Lobby

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