For much of 2017, IHG Hotels Group – which incorporates InterContinental, Crowne Plaza and Holiday Inn hotels amongst others – has been running a very impressive discount in conjunction with MasterCard.
That deal, which I first covered in January and then again in May, offers 20% off at InterContinental hotels and 30% off other participating IHG hotels in Europe.
It remains one of the best hotel discounts available on a consistent basis throughout the year. In fact, it is still valid and available for booking until 31st March 2018 (click here to read my article on that offer).
However, for a short time only, there is a deal on offer that blows those 20/30% discounts away!
IHG has launched a Winter Offer giving up to 50% off at participating hotels across Europe.
Is this deal actually any good?
I am always wary when I read of companies offering discounts of “up to” X amount off. More often than not, your chances of getting the full advertised discount are pretty low.
Yet, this sale from IHG seems to be doing what it says on the tin – offering 50% off or thereabouts – even at some genuinely high-end (chain) properties.
This sale is being marketed as a weekend offer and you must stay for a minimum of two nights to take advantage. In practice, some hotels will load sale rates midweek too – it is worth doing your research.
Additionally, bear in mind that the sale offers 50% off the Best Flexible Rate which is a more expensive rate than say an Advanced Purchase non-refundable. Nevertheless, the savings are superb!
I ran a couple of searches to see just how good the sale pricing is:
Here is the price per night at the InterContinental Amstel, Amsterdam on a random weekend in February:
And here is the rate on the same dates via hotels.com:
As you can see the average nightly rate on hotels.com was £283 for a total of £602, compared to the sale offer of £201 per night.
You would save approximately £200 on a 2-night stay!
Here is the price per night at the InterContinental Lisbon for a random weekend in January:
And here is the price on the same dates via hotels.com:
As you can see the average nightly rate is just £75 using this sale, as opposed to £121 on hotels.com – saving you over £100 on a 2-night stay!
Any other perks?
What’s especially interesting is that a number of the participating hotels have applied the sale rates to all of their room categories. That means you are able to access 50% discounts even on normally pricey rooms and suites.
Take the InterContinental Paris Le Grand as an example:
Here is the average nightly rate for a 2-night weekend stay in late February:
And here is the rate for the same room on hotels.com:
As you can see the average nightly rate is just £201 via this sale and approximately £414 for the entire stay. By comparison, the nightly rate on hotels.com is £298 with a total of £656.
Your savings would be roughly £242.
How to book
These rates are only available when booking directly via this special promotional page.
Book by 30th November 2017. Valid for stays up to 4th March 2018.
There are a couple of important things to be aware of when booking in this sale:
- IHG® Rewards Club points will NOT be awarded for stays booked under this offer.
- As above, you will not earn elite night credits on these stays so don’t think of these as a cheap way to qualify for elite status.
- Bookings are non-refundable – pretty standard in sales such as this one.
- Bookings do not count towards your personalised Accelerate target(s)
The terms and conditions also state that you need to print and present a voucher at check-in. On the voucher, you would confirm MasterCard as the Partner that provided you with this discount as well as other details about your stay.
Hotels are unlikely to enforce this, but the link to download the voucher is here.
You can view a full list of the T&C’s on this page.
Verdict
If you are comfortable firming up your travel plans a while in advance, then sales won’t get much better than this. Picking up rooms at InterContinental hotels for £75 a night is an amazing bargain whichever way you look at it. There may even be cheaper examples, my list was certainly not exhaustive.
Ordinarily, the inability to earn IHG points or elite night credit on these bookings would bother me, but at the end of the day, I put more value on a 50% discount!