Frequent Miler's latest team challenge, Million Mile Madness, is almost done! The last two weeks Greg, Nick, and Stephen competed to earn 1 Million SAS miles by flying 15 airlines. But who completed the challenge with the most Speed, Affordability, and Style?
IHG’s low dynamic pricing combined with their new award sale or 4th night free benefit is producing some excellent opportunities for NYC stays in the coming months.
I wrote about the award sale separately, so see IHG Rewards: Save 20% On 1-3 Night Award Stays, Makes Free Night Certs More Useful for more details about that.
While doing some research for that post, I noticed some amazing pricing for award stays in New York City. I’m not talking about NYC-adjacent either like Long Island or Secaucus, but properties in Manhattan. Here are just some examples of pricing in and around Times Square on random dates in February.
Granted, the weather in NYC in February isn’t going to be amazing. However, how often is it that you can book a hotel in/near Times Square that comes with a full kitchen for only 12,000 IHG Rewards points? If you bought those points on the regular occasions that IHG sells points for 0.5cpp, that means you’d effectively be paying only $60 per night.
Although it’s about twice as expensive points-wise, being able to book the InterContinental Times Square for fewer than 25,000 points is an equally excellent opportunity. Similarly, the Kimpton Muse for only 22,400 points per night is a steal.
If you have the old IHG Select credit card, you’d also receive a 10% points rebate on your award stay. That would drop the net cost of a stay at the Holiday Inn Manhattan-Financial District to only 10,080 points.
I should note that the cash price of these properties is fairly low during these dates, but when taking into account the fact that you’d have to pay taxes on non-award stays, you’re still looking at getting 1cpp of value or better by booking an award stay.
The pricing could get even better on stays of 4 nights if you have an IHG Premier or Traveler credit card. While you’d be missing out on the 20% discount from the award sale as that’s only valid on stays of 1-3 nights, that’s more than made up for by the IHG Premier 4th night free benefit.
Let’s say you wanted to visit New York City for Valentine’s Day. Booking February 14-18 would enable you to book the InterContinental Times Square for an average cost of only 20,500 points per night.
IHG isn’t the only hotel chain that has dynamic pricing when redeeming points, but their award pricing seems to be the best by far for Manhattan over the next few months. Hilton is charging similar cash rates as IHG, but award pricing is much higher considering both companies sell their points for 0.5cpp.
That’s still decent pricing by Hilton standards, but still far more expensive than IHG. Those are the prices for some mid-tier properties though; pricing is significantly more expensive for higher tier properties.
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Further illustration of how useless Hilton is
Sorry. For now Covid says “No”.
I just stayed in the IC TS a few weeks ago and it was fabulous. I’m not sure what the complaints have been about it, but we had a great room, great service, and loved the location. TS is only about 50% of the usual crowd, but for us that was a bene because we could actually navigate through it without having to go around as we usually do to get to most theaters. Go support NY theater now! Over 90,000 artists and techs are counting on you.
I agree with @Gene. The IC Barclay is great. The IC Times Square is questionable at best. Was there in May 2021 and the Times Square area was not the safest and this hotel was in the heart of it. I would consider the Kimpton though as I only use my free night certificates from IHG for Kimpton or IC properties. Everything else is hit or miss.
@ Stephen — IMO, the IC Barclay is vastly superior to IC Times Square, primarily because of the location (and the Club Lounge, if ever reopens).