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Update 3/20/23: Tomorrow is the last day to take advantage of IHG’s most recent 100% bonus on purchased points.
IHG has returned with a new sale that’s giving a 100% bonus when buying their points. That means you can buy IHG Rewards points for 0.5cpp.
Officially this is a targeted offer, but it seems that most, if not all, folks are targeted for a 100% bonus, which reduces the purchase cost to 0.5cpp when purchasing at least 30,000 points.
The Deal
- Buy IHG Rewards points for 0.5cpp when buying 26,000+ points with this 100% bonus on purchased points. Buy 5,000-25,000 points for 0.575cpp-0.675cpp depending on how many you purchase.
- Direct link to offer (our affiliate link)
Key Terms
- This Offer is available for qualifying purchases of IHG One Rewards points made between 12:00 AM ET on February 8, 2023 and 11:59 PM ET March 21, 2023 inclusive.
- A member eligible for this Offer will receive a bonus of 100% of the points purchased when they meet a minimum points purchase threshold on a per transaction basis.
- The number of points a member may purchase, gift, or receive as a gift during the Offer Period is subject to annual limits under the IHG Rewards Membership Terms and Conditions, which are available on www.ihg.com.
- Members may purchase a maximum of up to 150,000 points during a calendar year, so the number of points a member can purchase during the Offer Period will depend on how many points the member had already purchased during the same calendar year. For example, if a member had previously purchased 50,000 points in 2022, then the member could only purchase up to a maximum of 100,000 points during the Offer Period and would be eligible to receive additional bonus points under this Offer in the amount of 100% of the amount of points purchased during the Offer Period.
- Similar limits apply to gifting points and receiving points as a gift: Members may gift up to a maximum of 150,000 points, or receive as gifts from other members a combined maximum of up to 150,000 points, during the Offer Period, subject to reduction by the number of points that have been already gifted, or received as a gift, in the same calendar year.
- Purchased points, as well as any bonus points awarded under this Offer, do not count towards IHG One Rewards Elite status.
- This is an exclusive, non-transferable offer for intended recipients only and may not be forwarded.
- Offer is subject to change and cannot be combined with any other offer.
Best uses of IHG points
- 4th night free. Use points to book 4 nights for the price of 3. This benefit is valid on longer stays, so if staying 8 nights you’ll get both the 4th and 8th nights free. This benefit is available only to cardholders of the IHG Premier, Traveler and Business credit cards. Rather than reducing the total cost of the stay by 25%, the points required for every 4th night are deducted. Seeing as IHG uses dynamic pricing, that can be great if the 4th night is the most expensive, but not as good if that night is the cheapest. See this post for more about the possibilities.
- 10% points rebate. If you have the IHG Select credit card (no longer available for new applications), you’ll get a 10% points rebate when booking award stays. The points are credited back a few weeks after your stay, so you need to have the full number of points required for an award stay in your account. The 10% points rebate stacks with the 4th night free benefit if you have both an IHG Premier, Traveler or Business credit card and an IHG Select card, with the 4th night free being calculated first.
- Sweet spots with dynamic pricing. Although IHG uses dynamic pricing for award stays, award pricing isn’t always as high as the corresponding cash cost. For example, Stephen booked a stay at the Staybridge Suites Temecula-Wine Country in California. The average nightly cost was $258.81 with taxes and fees, but the points cost ranged from 19,000-23,000 points per night. Buying points at 0.5cpp would therefore enable you to stay for only $95-$115 per night at that award pricing – less than half the cost of a regular paid stay. Stacking the 4th night free and 10% points rebate reduced the cost of a 9 night stay there to only 14,500 points per night, or $72.50 per night when buying points at 0.5cpp. That was less than a third of the cost of a paid stay.
Things to know about IHG points
- When you book nights with points, you will not earn points for the stay unless IHG is running a promotion that awards bonus points per night/stay which includes award nights.
- Most hotel taxes are not charged on award stays, so this can make the value of buying points even better. Arguably, this factor and the one above roughly cancel each other out.
- IHG Rewards points purchases are made via Points.com. You can click through from a shopping portal to earn a little cashback on the purchase, thereby reducing your net cost for the points – you can find the current rates here.
- Points.com purchases don’t code as travel, so it’s best to pay with a card that earns at a higher rate for everyday spend or on a card where you’re working on a minimum spend requirement.
Past IHG points sales
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through December 29, 2022.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through October 21, 2022.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through August 7, 2022.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through July 15, 2022.
- 80% bonus (Buy points for 0.6 cents each). Valid through June 10, 2022.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through April 14, 2022.
- 80%-100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5-0.6 cents each). Valid through March 18, 2022.
- 80% bonus (Buy points for 0.6 cents each). Valid through January 4, 2022.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through November 8, 2021.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through October 8, 2021.
- 100% bonus (Buy points for 0.5 cents each). Valid through September 9, 2021.
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a couple of related questions about portal payout for points “buying”.
based on info i read so far, points&cash booking is treated as award booking and processed directly by ihg (higher % portal payout as opposed to buying points through points.com)?
if I use points&cash to “buy” points, portal will still pay out after I cancel the booking and ihg refunds me points paid and points for the cash portion? thanks.
I haven’t had luck with a portal paying out for Points & Cash bookings in the past, but it’s worth clicking through from one anyway because different portals sometimes track and pay out on different things. I certainly wouldn’t go into it expecting for a portal to pay out on Points & Cash though in case that’s what would make buying points that way worthwhile.
80% for me too.
Can I buy points to meet the minimum spend for an American Express bonus or does AE consider that a cash equivalent?
Yes. Hotel points are not cash equivalents.
I have never purchased points. They only offered me 80%.
The link offers me only 80% bonus points (0.56 cents per point), likely because I bought points in Oct ’22.
Gonna redeem my Hilton and Marriott points before buying more IHG points.
You don’t know that. I bought points in December and I have 100%.
[…] converted to award nights at less than 0.5 cents per point. If so, consider taking advantage of the IHG points sale here for 0.5 cents per point and then rebook your stays as awards. (This is where I’d normally say something about a […]
Stephen, my husband and I have two businesses. We each got a IHG business cc and, according to the terms, it says you have to wait 24 months to get the sign up bonus again. If I apply for a new cc under the second business, do you think I would get the sign up bonus for that new card declined? They are both legitimate corporations and have a tax ID number but I think i remember that you have to put your individual ss number down too on the app.
Thanks for the tips. I used your link to purchase points for the Intercontinental in Montreal (topped off my account).
Free cancellation on most award stays is the #1 pandemic hack that increased the value of all hotel points for me. Nearly all my IHG stays on points (aside from Mr & Mrs Smith which is -30) have free cancellation 1-2 days prior to your stay. Combined with Stephen’s great math on 4th night free/10% IHG select, it makes IHG points the single biggest value add for me (and they have a huge footprint worldwide). Always have a decent stash of IHG points – the only points I buy outright!
Since you showed pictures of Bora Bora IHGs and named it in the caption, I decided, “let’s see what’s available and at what price in Bora Bora.” And there wasn’t a single reward night available anywhere for either IHG Bora Bora resort through end of the 2023 available calendar. Not. One. Day.
Does the .5 cpp value only kick in at 25,000+ purchased points? I see the bonus starting at 5k points, but the cash price is slightly greater until 25k (such that buying 24k + 24k costs more than 25k + 25k)
You’re right, it does. I’d originally had that in the post from the last time they ran this promo, but then removed it when seeing the 100% bonus started at 5,000 points, forgetting that it’s not until you get to 26k points that you get the 0.5cpp rate.
@Nick Reyes
😉
Ha! When this came up on internal communications before we published the post, I may have responded with a “hip hip hooray!”. 🙂
I almost @ed you on Twitter when I saw DOC tweet it last night
Thanks for this. My husband needed two nights at a Holiday Inn Express near where he’s going to hike, in peak summer. The best rate I could find was $577 with tax for the two nights. Instead I bought 86,000 points for $430 and used 85,000 of them for his stay. $147 savings with just a little effort.
You can stack with a shopping portal as well, check cashbackmonitor
An somewhat tangential question. Can P2 with the IHG Business Credit card book a room for P1 (P2 won’t be traveling) and still get the 4th night benefit?
Only if it’s booked under P2’s account and they let P1 check in. The 4th night free benefit is linked to P2’s account overall, so using that card to guarantee the reservation won’t make a difference.
The best thing to do in this scenario is to make sure that the reservation made on P2’s account is done for two people, add P1 as the second guest and add a note on the reservation asking them to let P1 check in – that should reduce the likelihood that they’ll have issues when checking in.
What’s the current CPP when we buy points via Cash+Points to cancel/refund?
It depends on the property as some charge more than others for Points + Cash. I think it’s generally 0.6cpp, although there might be a few slightly better options; none as good as 0.5cpp from what I’m aware though.
I have seen 25,000 points for $140 recently, which breaks down to .56 cpp. Plus, if you use your IHG card to make that purchase, you get 10 points per dollar, so it makes it a pretty good deal if you need points in a pinch.
Do you remember which property it was where you saw 25k points for $140?
Yes, I found those prices when searching in San Francisco and London. The London hotels show 116 GBP in the price, and when you read the fine print, it converts it to $140.Just looking now, Crown Plaza Albert Embankment, Holiday Inn Oxford Circus, Staybridge Suites VauxhallHotel Indigo Paddington all have that price.
That’s good to know – thanks!
I no longer received 10 points per dollar using my IHG card as of March, FYI
can never seem to login. Log-in to IHG just fine, but can’t to this IHG-Points portal. And there’s no obvious way to request a password.
The password for the IHG/Points.com portal is your regular IHG password or PIN.
Hmm..thanks. But it doesn’t work. I tried calling a few weeks ago, didn’t help. I will try calling again or emailing their IT if there is way.
Have similar issues with login, maybe as a result from changing from the PIN to a real password. Now none of them seem to work with points.com…
I also can’t login to the points.com/IHG
I had the same issue. I can log into IHG and points.com and even connect my account to the points.com wallet, but the IHG buy points link still prompts me to log in and gives an error. However, I was able to purchase points through the IHG app by going to the Special Offers section.
I’ve had absolutely no luck purchasing via topcashback. Enter all the info and you just get a spinning globe, transaction never completes. Same thing happened in December when I tried buying at 80% (that one I abandoned altogether, this one I finally gave up on the portal and bought the points straight)
I’ve had the same issue, but it seems to happen regardless of whether I’ve clicked through from a portal or not. Interesting that not going via the portal resulted in it working for you.
Now that you mention it, it was more complicated.
First I tried clicking through the portal – a few times. Then I gave up and tried without the portal and through multiple browsers and it still didn’t work. Both in December and earlier this week.
I abandoned the December purchase but wanted the 100% enough to call in yesterday. They said they could process the transaction over the phone but I asked if there was a way I could do it online and they directed me to log into my account and find the buy offer (previously I had been clicking through either direct from the email offer or from points.com). I did it direct from the offer on the website and to my surprise it worked. (I doubt they reset anything for me over the phone so if other people run into this same problem hopefully this will be useful).
Thanks – I’ll have to give that a try.
This is a known problem that we’ve discussed in the IHG forum at Flyertalk. They don’t want to commission these points sales.
The offer I see after logging in is 80% bonus not 100%. Does the offer vary by person, or is it 80% for all this time?
I see 90% in my account so it seems variable
yeah i see 90% too
Yes it is targeted and variable. Billed as a “mystery bonus” in the email promoting it.
Thanks for the heads up – sometimes with these Mystery Bonuses they offer the same bonus to everyone, but apparently not this time. I’ll update the post.
Thanks for the writeup Stephen.
On this and the last 100% promotion, I’d seen no datapoints of anyone getting a portal to track. There is one datapoint in the flyertalk thread of a successful dispute with TCB to get the points awarded.
Can you purchase a few points now and purchase more points later?
Yes, up to the 150k base points yearly limit.
Could someone purchase points and then receive a gift from another member, to acquire 600,000 in points? (or 300,000 before bonus)
I’d wondered the same thing. The wording of the terms suggest they could because the 150,000 limits for buying and gifting appear to be enforced separately, but I’ve never tested it out.
As did I. But I can’t figure out how someone could use this promotion to gift points, rather than send them to their own account. There’s no provision in the points.com login for this.
Standard IHG points sale, but you did a great job of breaking down the excellent value of these points! I happen to have both the legacy CC and the Select and the Premier card, so I enjoy the 4th free and 10% back. It’s such a good value, I almost forgive IHG for having such a lame rewards program! Spire Elite=0. That being said, I’ve had wonderful experiences with the Ambassador status at Intercontinental and Kimpton properties.
Agreed – poor when it comes to benefits, but excellent for award stays. We seem to have gotten particularly good value since they moved to dynamic pricing which I wasn’t expecting.
I noticed the same thing–the value has been pretty consistently good as of late.
I purchased the maximum today.