IHG Rewards Club is the loyalty program for the InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) which includes Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn, Hotel Indigo and of course InterContinental hotels.
They have launched a 4-day flash sale offering a 100% bonus when you purchase at least 5,000 points.
Members are capped at purchasing a maximum of 60,000 IHG points per calendar year.
If you maxed out this promotion the maths would look like this:
As you can see, via this flash sale you can purchase 120,000 IHG points for $690. At today’s exchange rates that works out at approximately £513.
Is it worth buying points?
The first thing to look at here is: are we likely to see a better bonus? IHG Rewards Club runs numerous ‘buy points’ promotions throughout the year and a 100% bonus seems to be the highest version offered.
With that out of the way, you then need to consider how you would use the points.
Here are a couple of examples where buying and then using those points could prove a huge bargain:
1.) Redeeming during ‘peak season’
Example A
One of the best times to use points is when hotel prices are seasonally high.
Take the InterContinental Amstel, Amsterdam for example. This is the price for a one-night weekend stay in late June 2018:
The cheapest non-refundable rate is £462. Or, you could redeem 50,000 IHG points for a fully cancellable and changeable reservation.
If you were to purely use points purchased in this promotion, you will have effectively paid circa £215 for your room – a ‘discount’ of more than 50% on the cash rate!
Example B
Here is the price for some nights at the InterContinental Sydney over New Year – you couldn’t really get any more peak than that:
As you can see the room available for cash is an eye-watering £3,152 per night plus tax. Alternatively, you can redeem as little as 40,000 IHG points + $130 for a reward night. Here again, having a stock of IHG points (purchased cheaply) can be used to great effect.
2.) Using them for PointBreaks hotels
I first covered the fantastic IHG PointBreaks promotion in this article here. In summary, it allows you to book nights at participating hotels worldwide for just 5,000 points per night. An updated version of this deal has since been released which I covered here.
Click here to view the list of hotels that are still bookable at these promotional rates
Of the properties still available to book, I selected the Holiday Inn Manaus:
Yes, prices are pretty cheap to start with, a 2-night stay for 2 adults, would cost roughly £104. But you can still halve that! If you were to purchase the minimum 5,000 points required in this flash sale it would cost $67.50 and would include a bonus 5,000 points.
You can then redeem those 10,000 IHG points for 2 free nights using the PointBreaks promotion. Thus reducing your total cost for this stay to roundabout £50.
How to buy points
Visit this page on the IHG website
You will be prompted to provide your IHG log-in details after which you will be able to see the different price levels of points available.
This flash sale runs from 26th September until 23:59 P.M on 29th September 2017.
Verdict
I generally don’t recommend speculatively buying points unless you have a specific use in mind. However, at this price, there is the potential for some genuinely large savings. Remeber that a 100% bonus is as good as it has gotten in recent years. As long as you have a reasonable idea of where you would likely use them, this promotion is a decent time to buy points.
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