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Good news for IHG Rewards Club Select credit card holders: Chase and IHG have decided to honor the annual free night certificate that comes with this credit card at any property in the world for all certificates issued by May 1st 2019. This card is no longer available for new applications, but if your card recently renewed or will renew between now and next May, your certificate will be valid at any IHG property worldwide.
You might remember that a few weeks ago, it was announced that the annual free night certificate that comes with the IHG Rewards Club Select Credit Card would now be capped for use at properties that charge up to 40,000 IHG Rewards Club points per night. The announcement was unexpected and the rollout of the change was haphazard at best. There was quite a bit of confusion as IHG originally announced that only certificates issued before May 1st, 2018 would be honored anywhere in the world. They later said that those who signed up between January 1st and May 1st 2018 would receive one uncapped certificate at first renewal. That was strange because it left anyone who had opened the card between May 1st of last year and December 31st of last year without ever receiving an uncapped certificate. As all of those people presumably signed up under the understanding that they would receive an uncapped certificate at first anniversary, it seemed strange to exclude them from the benefit.
Thankfully, IHG and Chase are doing the right thing here by giving everyone a year’s notice and therefore a chance at one more uncapped certificate (as announced in this tweet). That’s good news for many of us who have anniversary dates before May 1st as not only was our certificate this year uncapped, but we will receive another certificate valid at any IHG property worldwide next year as well.
It really seems that this is how Chase / IHG should have handled it from the get-go, but it’s good to see that they were responsive to feedback and did right by card holders.
Note that of course this change does not apply to holders of the new IHG Rewards Club Premier or IHG Rewards Club Traveler cards. Those cards still come with an annual certificate valid at any property that charges up to 40,000 points for a free night.
H/T: Danny the Deal Guru
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Great news! Will be interesting to see how this complicates the “exciting upgrade opportunity” that Chase says will be offered to IHG Select members sometime soon. Hard to sell the new card as an upgrade if we would lose an uncapped free night. I doubt Chase/IHG have thought this far ahead, though, based on our recent experience
do you know if the fee will go up for present cardholders (who signed up at $49 rate)?
I don’t know. I’d be inclined to doubt it unless they eventually switch everyone over to one of the new cards, though I think that’s somewhat doubtful — would they force everyone over to a higher annual fee or push everyone down to a lower fee? If I’m guessing, and this is no better than a guess, I’d say no change in that for a while.
That is a nice start. But I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t honor the same thing for those of us who received new cards last year and certificates will be received in the next few months-mine in July and my wife’s in Oct-we’ll ahead of the IHG and Chase announcement of their new card and rules? It would seem that would truly be the proper thing to do.
The announcement here is that certificates issued before May 1, 2019 will be valid at any hotel (not capped). If your anniversaries are coming in July and October, the certificates you receive will not be capped (as they will be issued before May 1, 2019).