IHG Rewards Platinum Cash and Points Promotion
Earlier today I covered my wife’s pretty good IHG Rewards Club Accelerate 4Q promotion. If you haven’t checked your targeted offers I highly recommend you do so. During the writing of that post I noticed that my cash and points costs were somehow discounted. Now, I have been able to figure out why. IHG Rewards Club is currently offering a 12% discount on these awards for Platinum Elites.
The Offer
As a Platinum Elite member you can also save an additional 12% when you book a Points & Cash stay between now and September 18, and stay before November 30, 2016.
Terms
- 12% discount is offered at time of booking and only pertains to the cash cost of bookings.
- Must be a Platinum Elite member at the time of booking to be eligible for offer.
- *Bookings for The Venetian® and The Palazzo® hotels are excluded from discounts.
- This offer is subject to the general IHG® Rewards Club membership Terms and Conditions.
You can find the full terms of the offer here.
What This Means
IHG Cash and Points reservations work a bit differently than with other chains. Basically you are booking an award stay and purchasing the extra points to cover the cost. So let’s look at an example:
If you book this hotel for 40,000 points + $110, then you will be charged and the booking would be made. If you cancel, 60,000 points will be deposited into your account. Basically you will have purchased 20,000 points for $110. That works out to a cost per point of $.0055. Not bad.
As you can see above, there are four tiers. Here is the cost per point at each tier:
- 5,000 points for $35.20 = $.007 per point
- 10,000 points for $61.60 = $.0062 per point
- 15,000 points for $87.12 = $.0058 per point
- 20,000 points for $110 = $.0055 per point
Yes technically this is a loophole for purchasing points, but it is one that has been around quite a long time. In other words, I don’t think this is too much of a hack considering IHG probably likes that they get your money and that your points are locked in. With that said, even at this price, I wouldn’t purchase points unless I had a specific redemption in mind. Yes, there are very very good redemptions at this cost level and still some bad ones.
Conclusion
This promotion does require you to have Platinum status, but I suspect many of you already do given that it is a benefit of the IHG Rewards Club credit card. If you have a specific redemption in mind, this is as cheap as points in the program get, but that doesn’t mean it will be a great deal for everyone.
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ihg has a recent 50% off in Mexico & Caribbean. I booked Cancun Presidente for 15,000 points / nt. Where it costed 30,000. At this rate, it is $82.50 per night. Which isn’t bad for that hotel.
That being said, Priceline / Hotwire (ExpressDeal/HotRate) sometimes has crazy discount. Just 2 c$.
A few things to keep in mind –
1. As is well documented elsewhere on the web, IHG has & will close accounts for obvious abuse of the Points + Cash system to generate or “collect” points. Their definition of abuse is undefined and quite broad in their ability to use it as they see fit. Be modest where your activities in this area are concerned. Just sayin’.
2. These rates are pretty close to those seen several times a year when they run their “Buy Points with 100% Bonus” promos. Also quite close to rates available during Daily Getaways – which were still available at promotion’s end for at least the last 2 years.
3. Seems they have been running these % off Cash + Points deals more frequent as of late, with the last one being 15% off.
Summary – Plenty of options and opportunities to hoard points for vacations etc if that’s your thing; just be careful with the way you game the system. Happy Travels.