IHG points on sale for .576 cents each at 1pm, but only buy if you need them now

Today’s Daily Getaways deal is a sale on IHG points, from 0.576 cents per point. This deal starts at 1pm Eastern time today (Wednesday, April 11th, 2018). That’s actually a bit higher than our Reasonable Redemption Value for IHG points (0.57 cents per point), meaning that you should only get in on this if you have a specific high-value redemption in mind. That said, if you recently opened the new IHG Rewards Club Traveler or IHG Rewards Club Premier card, one of the key benefits is the 4th night free on award stays. That might make for a good redemtpion opportunity (though if you don’t need points right now, you can often buy them cheaper). Note that this one is unlikely to sell out quickly, so there is probably no rush to buy at 1pm.

The Deal

• Buy IHG points from Daily Getaways starting at 1pm Eastern time on 4/11/18 in the following packages:
  • 8,500 IHG points for $50 (0.588 cents per point)
  • 15,000 IHG points for $89 (0.593 cents per point)
  • 25,000 IHG poitns for $149 (0.596 cents per point)
  • 50,000 IHG points for $290 (0.58 cents per point)
  • 100,000 IHG points for $580 (0.58 cents per point)
  • 130,000 IHG points for $749 (0.576 cents per point)

Key Terms

• Must be an IHG member to purchase
• Can purchase a maximum of 5 of each package or 24 total IHG packages
• Points will post within 10 business days
• Readers report that Daily Getaways only accepts US-issued credit cards for payment

Quick Thoughts

For a brief rundown of all of this years Daily Getaways deals, see our Frequent Miler quick reference guide to the Daily Getaways 2018:

Daily Getaways 2018 Guide

Glancing at the guide, you’ll see that we don’t recommend buying IHG points today unless you have a specific high-value redemption in mind. That’s because points are generally only worth about 0.57 cents each. Furthermore, there are often opportunities to buy points for less if you have at least 5,000 points in your IHG account. Opportunities to do so come and go, but here are some deals that have come up in the past year to buy IHG points for less:

• (EXPIRED) Buy IHG Rewards Club Points With 100% Bonus – Pay Less Than 0.5 cpp
• [Expired] Buy IHG points under .49 cents per point!
• [Expired] Buy IHG points from .43125 cents each [Targeted]
• Can you buy IHG points for 0.46 cents per point?
• Buy IHG points for .46 cents each! Get PointBreaks for $23 a night

As you can see, it’s not rare to be able to get your hands on IHG points cheaply. That said, we don’t know if those opportunities will continue with the new credit cards offering a 4th night free on award stays. If those opportunities do remain, it’ll be interesting to see whether or not the 20% discount on points purchases for IHG Traveler and Premier card holders will apply to points & money bookings. IHG also often offers bonuses on buying points directly (like the recent 100% bonus shown above), which might become even cheaper with the 20% discount. Note though that IHG caps you to buying 60K points per year if you’re purchasing directly. I’m not aware of any cap when purchasing via points & money awards.

However, if you need points today and you hold one of the new IHG credit cards, you could potentially get pretty good value with the new 4th night free benefit. For example, if you were to buy the 130K package for $749, you would have enough points for 3 nights at a 40K-per-night property. With the new IHG credit cards, you could tack on a 4th night for free. That comes out to an average cost of $187.50 per night, with 10K points left over. That won’t be a deal at every 40K-per-night hotel, but there are certainly some cities in Europe where that would handily beat the going rate – and you might have enough left over for a PointBreaks hotel.

I’ve also found deals like this useful for helping friends get a small discount. For example, a group of friends were planning a weekend in New York City a few years ago around the time of the Daily Getaways sale. None of them were points enthusiasts — meaning that in addition to not being in position to manufacture the kind of points necessary, none of them had the 5,000 points in an IHG account that would be required to take advantage of the cash and points deals that pop up from time to time. Buying several hundred thousand IHG points in the Daily Getaways sale helped them save on the cost of rooms for their weekend in the city.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t make much sense to buy these points speculatively since it is at least pretty likely that there will be opportunities to buy them for less and IHG has been known to devlaue without much notice.

Overall, this one is probably a pass, but in some circumstances it could be worth consideration.

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