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IHG is offering some members 20% off on the cash portion of a cash & points stay. This means you can buy IHG points cheaply. I wasn’t targeted for this one (Stephen was), so I have not been able to search widely, but there are usually opportunities to buy points from 0.46-0.48cpp with this deal. That’s a pretty solid deal if you have a good use in mind for the points.
The Deal
- IHG has a targeted offer to get 20% off on Points & Cash bookings
- Direct link to this offer
Key Terms
- Must book by 10/20/18 and stay between 10/17/2018-12/20/2018
- Cash portion is nonrefundable. If your award stay is canceled in accordance with the hotel’s cancellation policy, points will be redeposited into your account
- See promotion page for more terms
Quick Thoughts
If you’re targeted, this could be a solid deal for buying points. In search results, you may see some of the figures crossed out as seen below when you’re logged in and searching:
In that case, it’ll bring up rates where you’ll see the cash portion of the cash & points options discounted:
In the above example, you can use 50K points + $104 to book the hotel. When you do that, IHG will immediately charge your credit card for $104. If you later cancel, you’ll receive a total of 70K points back — having effectively bought 20K points for $104 (a rate of 0.52 cents per point).
Note that rates on the cash portion do vary a bit. When these sales happen, I usually find some options as low as 0.48 or even 0.46 cents per point, which beats the public sales at 0.5cpp. That said, those sales do come around often, so I wouldn’t buy points speculatively. On the other hand, I have a family member who needs a hotel room tommorrow night — and buying points at a rate like this would save them ~$50 over the next best option, so there are certainly times when this can come in handy.
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I am Platinum Ambassador IHG and on a recent stay I was analyzing the difference in benefits provided when paying with points fully for a night, versus paying with money fully, versus the combination cash and points. I determined that paying with cash and points was very much a disadvantage; if you compared the three just in terms of cost, you did better paying with dollars fully or with points fully: moreover, the other benefits derived from paying in full (status nights, point accrual, getting all the benefits of your status applied to that stay) did not occur when you paid with combination cash + points. And, if you cancel the reservation, they don’t reimburse your cash with cash, they give you back your cash in points which you may or may not want. the points bonus here might fix the value issue, it won’t fix the accrual issue.
Nick or anyone, if not using ihg classic cc to pay for the cash portion, which CCs would be recommend to earn the highest rewards pts for hotel/travel? Thx
How do I book a IHG reward night? For every date and location I put in it says no reward night available. Is there a way to see what nights are reward nights before I put in the info? I saw where you click on a Dropbox that has reward night but when I did it said something like multiple rates (?) . Not sure what that means.
The IHG (originally holidex) reservation system sets aside 5% of the rooms in each hotel for reward nights. After those go, the hotel still appears available, but no redemptions. Places like Las Vegas at New Years or Phoenix during spring training run out of award nights way ahead of time.
Search something like Chicago on a Sunday night and click the rewards box and you should see lots of hotels with reward availability .