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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 with this sale.
Past IHG Points Sales
- 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.

The Deal
- Buy IHG Rewards points for 0.5cpp when buying 26,000+ points, or 0.575cpp when buying 15,000-25,000 points
- Direct link to offer (our affiliate link)
Key Terms
- This offer is available for qualifying purchases made during the period from 12:00 AM ET April 6, 2022 through 11:59 PM ET April 14, 2022 (“Offer Period”).
- Eligible members will receive a bonus of 100% of the points purchase when they meet a minimum points purchase threshold on a per transaction basis. (Please click through to access the landing page for the Offer.)
- 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 the applicable percentage of additional bonus points under this Offer based only on 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 Rewards Elite status.
Best uses
- 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
- 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.
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.
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’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.