Having problems like keeping track of hotel free night expiration dates isn’t a problem. It’s an inconvenience. If you screw it up, all you’re out is a free night at a hotel. However, the value of that free night, in the cost of annual fees to get it, can be anywhere from $49 for the IHG Select card to $650 for the Bonvoy Brilliant. It could have also required spending $15,000 or more on a hotel credit card.
That’s why you never want to waste one of these free nights.
I use Awardwallet to track my loyal program points. One of the nice features is that it shows all your free night and suite upgrade certificates and when they expire.
In 2022, Sharon applied for the IHG Rewards Premier Mastercard by Chase. At the time, the sign-up bonus was 120,000 points plus a free night worth up to 40K points. After earning the free night, it has to be redeemed within 1 year (which means completing the stay).
We only have a few months before it expires, and most of our travels are planned. The few opportunities to use the free night showed no award inventory. Unlike the annual free night from the IHG Rewards Premier card, you cannot add points to book a hotel costing more than 40K.
There was only one place where we could reasonably use the free night. There was another hotel I would have preferred, but I booked the room with the certificate. Such is life when dealing with free nights.
Well, I should have said that I THOUGHT I booked the room with the expiring certificate.
I was looking at Awardwallet for an unrelated issue and saw that the expiring free night certificate was still in our account. I refreshed the data and the same thing showed up. I logged into the IHG website and the 40K free night was still there.
I checked the reservation I booked and all it said was Chase Reward Night. My only recourse was to cancel the reservation and see what happened.
After processing the cancellation, I saw that my 40K anniversary free night was used instead of the one from the sign-up bonus.
Oops.
What did I learn?
I thought I had done everything correctly but I’ve had problems with IHG’s website being buggy. Like when I was trying to make a reservation two months away, it changed the date to the current date. I had to call the hotel to straighten that one out.
When you look at the IHG App or the website, it differentiates between the free nights.
This is the free night we received for the sign-up bonus.
This one is the free night from the IHG Select card, which must be used at a hotel charging 40K or less.
Finally, this is the one from the IHG Rewards Premier card, to which you can add points and use at any hotel with available award space.
When you select which free night you want to use, you are sent to the IHG main reservation page. After filling out the hotel information and date of your stay, there’s a Rate Preference drop-down menu. You need to MAKE SURE that the same free night certificate you selected shows up.
When I rebooked our hotel, I made sure that it said New Cardmember Bonus Free Night.
Luckily I caught this mistake and could rebook the room using the correct certificate.
Once you’ve finished the reservation, there’s nothing on the confirmation email to show which free night you redeemed from your account. Once you attach a free night to a reservation, it’s removed from your account. It’s up to you to go back and make sure the correct one was used.
In addition, if you have more than one free night in your IHG account and want to stay for multiple nights, you must book each night separately. While this is a pain, it can come in handy if you need to delay your trip, like what we had to do when a hurricane hit Florida.
Maybe it’s just me, but I have the worst luck booking with the IHG website. I’ll see if I’ll have any better luck using the app. Can’t hurt, right?
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