Chase launched a new transfer bonus yesterday which offers a seemingly eye-catching bonus of 80%. The downside is that it’s available when transferring to IHG One Rewards and so should be avoided as it’s very poor value for your points.
The Deal
- Get an 80% bonus when transferring Chase Ultimate Rewards points to IHG One Rewards.
Key Terms
- Expires April 30, 2025.
Quick Thoughts
The reason we wouldn’t recommend taking advantage of this transfer bonus is because IHG frequently sells its points for 0.5 cents per point. During those sales, that means that you can buy 2,000 IHG points for $10 (although there’s usually a minimum amount of points you have to buy in order to get them at 0.5 cents per point).
On the Chase side of things, you can always cash out Ultimate Rewards points for 1 cent per point, or more if you utilize the Pay Yourself Back feature on some cards. If you transferred 1,000 Ultimate Rewards points to IHG with this transfer bonus, you’d only get 1,800 IHG points. If, on the other hand, you cashed out your Ultimate Rewards at 1 cent per point, you could buy 2,000 IHG points during a sale. Even that wouldn’t be recommended seeing as you can get significantly better value than that by transferring to other programs like Hyatt, but it’s still much better than making use of this transfer bonus.
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I feel like the baseline transfer ratio should be more like choice at 1:2, then it’s worth doing some transfer when there is bonus
So essentially there should be no time that we should transfer to the useless IHG. Even if it’s 100% transfer bonus it would be like buying the points. IHG truly sucks. I regret getting their card
I still love IHG as you can get great value when redeeming points – we’ve bought tons of their points the last few years. They’re just not a great option for transferable points because the currencies that transfer to them don’t offer a good transfer ratio.
Would someone explain how I would be able to get a good value redeeming points? Do I sign up with their credit card? I have chase UR but as you mentioned the transfer ratio is not great. thank you
Irrespective of loyalty program, sign-up bonuses are the least expensive method of acquiring points.
For ongoing spending at IHG properties, the points earned on its two personal credit cards have an effective reward rate of 2.5 percent and 5 percent, respectively. Not terribly attractive. Better value would be found by using a transferable point credit card and transferring those points to an airline loyalty program. Depends on your priorities.
In the absence of tier status, points earned on stays (without consideration of credit card points) yield an effective reward rate of about 5 percent. Top tier status yields an effective reward rate of roughly 10 percent. Many programs are gravitating toward reward rates near this number. The two IHG personal credit cards do provide mid-level tier status.
Taken together, IHG is not a terribly rewarding program. But, a person might find that IHG locations are more convenient and overcome the poor reward rate. Personal choice.
I think the traditional advice would be to grab the sign-up bonus and that’s it.
Hope this helps. Best of luck.
Chase Ultimate Reward points are BEST used when booking flights. In general, if you want to know if you are getting a good deal with your points, here is a good way:
Take the cost of what you are buying (i.e $100 flight)
Divide it by the number of points used to cover the charge (2,000 points)
then multiply it by 100. ($100/2000 points x 100)
If the result is less than 1, its generally not a good deal.