IHG Rewards Club: Earn Free Nights Faster – at least 40,000 bonus points!

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has announced their latest personalized promotion for members of their rewards program IHG Rewards Club: Free Nights. Faster. Complete a number of personalized tasks by April 30, 2019, and earn at least 40,000 bonus points (worth $200). Find out what my offer is this time and whether I think it’s worth it to move spend to IHG! Register to participate and post your offer!

IHG has been running personalized promotions, formerly known as “Accelerate”, for a while now and they sometimes have been very attractive. As they got better at it, the outsized earning opportunities have become less frequent and the format has been changed. 
The latest iteration is called “Free Nights. Faster.” and runs from January 15 – April 30, 2019. As previously, you’ll have to complete a number of tasks, like a minimum number of stays, stays at certain brands or booking with specific rates. Some tasks are as simple as paying your IHG stay with your IHG Rewards MasterCard! Each task will earn bonus points and completing all (or most) of them will earn you an achievement bonus. 

In my case, I have to complete 5 tasks for a total of 58,650 bonus points. At my valuation of 0.5cents/point that’s a bonus of almost $300:

To complete these tasks and earn the full bonus, I have to stay at least three times on bonus package rates, with two stays of 4 nights, and two at Holiday Inns, for a total of minimum 9 nights. For a best case scenario in Asia, I’d assume an average of $80/night for a total of $720. My total bonus would equal a payback of over 40% on my hotel spend – that’s a very good deal.
Unfortunately, the specifics of the tasks make it unlikely for me to participate in this promotion: Bonus package rates are generally much more expensive than the best available rates, so I’d “overpay” to complete these tasks. I rarely stay 4 nights at the same hotel, making that task difficult, too. And Holiday Inn’s are one of my least favorite IHG brands, making the promo even less attractive. 

The promotions are meant to encourage you to stay more and do things you might not do otherwise. In my case the promotion attempts that, but is a bridge too far – the unattractive conditions mean that I won’t participate and will move my spend from IHG to other chains. 
How about your IHG Free Nights Faster promotion? Is it attractive? What do you have to do to earn a bonus? Are you going to shoot for it?

You can register for IHG Rewards Club Free Nights Faster here.

If you’d like to get more travel related news or deals like this from around the world, please follow me on Twitter – I’m posting news daily, so you can stay up to date on the world of travel with my Twitter updates! Or, for a weekly update, sign up for my newsletter for a Sunday Summary!


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *