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During yesterday’s Ask Us Anything, one of the questions we received was whether a reader should apply for the 100,000 point bonus on the Chase Marriott Bonvoy Boundless card or wait to see if a better offer appeared on the Hyatt or IHG cards.
I mentioned that the IHG Premier card was worth considering even at the 125,000 point level which is where the bonus was at yesterday, but it’s worth considering even more now because Chase has increased that to 140,000 points with the annual fee also being waived in the first year. The no annual fee IHG Traveler card has had its welcome offer increased to 100,000 points too.
The Basics
| Card Offer and Details |
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 ⓘ $1118 1st Yr Value Estimate5 60K IHG Free Nights valued at $1280 Click to learn about first year value estimates 5 x 60K Free Night Certificates ⓘAffiliateThis is an affiliate offer. Frequent Miler may earn a commission if you are approved for this offer Five 60K free night certificates after $5K spend in 3 months after account opening.$99 Annual Fee This card is subject to Chase's 5/24 rule (click here for details). Recent better offer: Five 60K free night certificates after $4K spend in 3 months (Expired 6/2/24) Earning rate: 10X IHG ✦ 5X travel, dining, and gas stations ✦ 3X on all other purchases Card Info: Mastercard World Elite issued by Chase. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: 10K bonus points + $100 statement credit after you spend $20K in a calendar year + make one additional purchase ✦ Diamond status after $40K in purchases + one additional purchase in a calendar year Noteworthy perks: Anniversary free night e-certificate good at IHG properties up to 40K points per night ✦ Ability to add an unlimited number of points to a free night certificate to book a higher-level hotel ✦ Fourth night free on award stays ✦ 20% discount on points purchases ✦ Platinum elite status ✦ Up to $50 in United TravelBank cash per year (must register your card with your United account) ✦ Complimentary Instacart+ for 3 months (must activate by 12/31/27) ✦ $10 monthly Instacart credit |
| Card Offer and Details |
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 ⓘ $694 1st Yr Value EstimateClick to learn about first year value estimates 120K Points ⓘAffiliateThis is an affiliate offer. Frequent Miler may earn a commission if you are approved for this offer 120K points after $2K spend in 3 monthsNo Annual Fee FM Mini Review: A good no annual fee card for anyone who values the 4th night free benefit. Earning rate: ✦ 5X IHG ✦ 3x dining, gas stations utilities, cable, Internet, phone, and select streaming services ✦ 2X everywhere else Card Info: Mastercard World issued by Chase. This card has no foreign currency conversion fees. Big spend bonus: 10K bonus points after $10K in purchases and one additional purchase each calendar year ✦ Gold status after $20K in purchases and one additional purchase each calendar year. Noteworthy perks: Fourth night free on award stays ✦ 20% discount on points purchases ✦ No foreign transaction fees ✦ Complimentary Instacart+ for 3 months (must activate by 12/31/27) ✦ $10 monthly Instacart credit |
Are You Eligible?
To get these cards, you must not be a current IHG Premier or IHG Traveler cardholder, and at least 24 months must have passed since you last received a new cardmember bonus for the IHG Premier or IHG Traveler card. Plus, you must be under 5/24.
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Chase’s 5/24 Rule: With most Chase credit cards, Chase will not approve your application if you have opened 5 or more cards with any bank in the past 24 months. To determine your 5/24 status, see: 3 Easy Ways to Count Your 5/24 Status. The easiest option is to track all of your cards for free with Travel Freely. |
Quick Thoughts
Chase has offered a 140,000 point bonus on the IHG Premier card once before, but if my memory serves me correctly the $89 annual fee wasn’t waived that time. That means this latest offer is the best there’s ever been on the IHG Premier card which definitely makes it worth considering.
Notwithstanding the 140k bonus, it’s a great card to own if you ever have paid stays at IHG properties seeing as it earns 10x. It’s also great for award stays as one of the benefits is that you get every 4th night free when redeeming points. Not only that, but if you have the old IHG Select credit card which gives a 10% rebate on redeemed points, the two benefits stack with each other.
For example, we recently stayed four nights at the Candlewood Suites Virginia Beach Town Center. Thanks to IHG’s newly introduced dynamic pricing, the price during our stay was 15,000 points per night (although the number of points required for other dates was higher). With the 4th night free benefit on the IHG Premier card, that meant what would have cost 60,000 points only cost us 45,000 points. Also having the IHG Select card meant we got a 4,500 point rebate, reducing the total cost to 40,500 or only 10,125 points per night – a great redemption for a one bedroom suite with a full kitchen.
The 100,000 point offer on the IHG Traveler card is also a fantastic offer for a card which never has an annual fee and which also comes with the 4th night free benefit. It only earns 5x when paying for IHG stays, but if you rarely pay for hotels then that lesser earning rate isn’t as important.
Despite being a great offer for the Traveler card, it doesn’t really make sense to actually apply for it instead of the Premier card seeing as the annual fee is waived for the first year on the Premier card. Provided you can meet the extra $1,000 in spend required, it makes more sense to get the additional 40,000 bonus points, then product change to the Traveler card at renewal if you don’t want to pay the $89 annual fee.
Note that the $89 annual fee also gets you a free night certificate good at any property costing up to 40,000 points, so it might still be worth keeping the IHG Premier card at renewal. IHG sometimes ends up being generous with the free night certificates too by allowing you to redeem them at properties which actually cost more than 40,000 points on the night you want to book. Dynamic pricing has reduced the cost of many properties due to COVID, so there are currently far more properties in the 40k and under range than in the past couple of years. For example, when doing some research a few months ago, I found that every single InterContinental property in the US could be booked for 40k points or fewer.
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[…] IHG Premier Increased To 140k With Annual Fee Waived First Year, IHG Traveler 100k […]
Is the dynamic pricing applicable for all ihg US hotels? When I see some hotels it does not look like the case
My understanding is that all IHG hotels can use dynamic pricing, although it might be down to each hotel as to whether or not they take advantage of it.
Any sense on when this expires? I’m at 4/24 and am dropping another card off that on 11/1. I’d like to get this card and the new Marriott deal, but I know that Marriott offer is only good until 10/15 so it would have to go first…
There’s no word on when this is due to end unfortunately. I imagine it’ll be around for at least a couple of weeks, but no idea if it’ll be around beyond that.
The link for my referral only offers the old offer of the card with the annual fee not waived and 125,000 points. Any way for the recipient of the referral to get this much better offer?
Thanks!
The recipient could risk it and apply using your referral link and hope Chase matches it when secure messaging them, but Josh didn’t have any luck matching above, so it’s definitely a risk for the recipient.
Thanks, Stephen!
I won’t have him risk it.
I earlier took advantage of the first year fee waived and $150.00 credit and 75,000 points after paying $2,000.00. Then plan to downgrade after 1st year after receiving certificate and not paying the first year annual fee when it comes due. Chase usually sends out free night at time of fee due, unless they adopted the AMEX way of doing things!
Approved on 9/12 for the 125,000 sign up bonus. SMed Chase today to match the increased public offer and was denied. I’ve had offers matched in the past so seems to be a general change of policy over at Chase.
It is hard to waste a 5/24 spot on one of those cards. I got the Hilton Surpass, for the 2nd time, and clocked 175K.
Agreed. IHG and marriott cards from chase are never worth it.
How did you get the bonus TWICE on the Hilton card? I thought the bonus was only once per lifetime of the card. I got this card twice as well, but the bonus was not applied the second time because I had the card in the past.
Applied for 140k offer with AF back in early July, SMed about getting AF waiver. Not hopeful, but it’s been just under 90 days, so we’ll see.
Good luck! Let us know if they do end up refunding the annual fee.
“Also, your account isn’t eligible for the new offer you
requested, the original offer is still available and will
remain on your account. The option to waive the annual fee
is not available. We apologize for the inconvenience.“
That sucks.
After a bit of back and forth I was actually able to get AF refund. I guess in a way I was lucky that the offer enhancement was the removal of the AF, because Chase agent made it sound like if the change was in the amount of points the adjustment would not be happening.
Are the IHG traveler and the premier considered separate products? Can i apply for both and get both sign up bonuses?
To be honest, I’m not sure as I haven’t heard any data points of anyone who’s tried. You can certainly have the old Select card and one of these new cards, so I suspect you can get both the Traveler and Premier for the signup bonuses. I’m not certain on that though, so I’d apply for the card you want the most first just in case IHG declines the second application.
I tried to downgrade from the premier to the travler and they said the only option I have is to downgrade to some card that has a $29 annul fee
Interesting. I forget what the $29 card was called, but I don’t think it had any features that made it worth keeping that one. It might be worth calling again and speaking to a different agent, as my understanding was that you could product change to the Traveler card.
Wow thanks so much !!!
I have closed the card about 2 weeks ago. After reading your reply . I called them back and complained that I only closed the card based on their wrong information that the card would have a $29 annual fee. She said the she is aware of that issue since there old system still says that the travler card has a $29 annual fee. But in reality it wouldn’t. She was able to reopen the account and do the product change! Thanks so much !!!
And btw even though I closed the card right after the anniversary. The free night certificate still shows in my account active. Do you think it will stay active even when I didnt pay the annual fee in the second year ?
I’d say yes, it should. I’ve cancelled in the past and still kept my cert.
That’s fantastic – I’m glad you managed to get it sorted out. You should be fine with your free night certificate – Chase seems to award them far earlier than Amex does for Marriott certs, so once it’s in your IHG account, I doubt it’ll get clawed back.
Hey David, would you mind sharing your experience a bit more? I just got told there’s $29 fee for the Traveler card – that’s a pretty bad deal for a downgrade. Did you actually argue with a CS rep that there isn’t a fee now or what?
I said I thought it was no fee, to which CS rep said “that was a limited time promo”…
Call again to speak to a different rep. There is a $29 IHG card you can downgrade to, but the Traveler card has no annual fee.
Hey Stephen, the $29 IHG card that people are talking about is the IHG Traveler Card. The no annual fee only applies to new signups. If you product trade to the card the annual fee is $29. I have had a long extensive conversation with supervisors and the Chase Executive office about this and they explained to me that the card was originally launched with a $29 annual fee but they didn’t meet their signup quota so the card now offers as an incentive to signup a reduced annual fee of $0 per year but if you product trade then you will pay the $29 since the $0 annual fee is a promotion to signup directly for the card. This is no different than when Chase had Sapphire Preferred cards that had a $125 annual fee while other links had a $95 annual fee. IHG and Chase assume that if you are considering downgrading then you are more likely to pay the $29 annual fee.
I have verified this information with Chase’s executive team in June of 2020 after having been informed of the $29 annual fee in both 2019 and 2020 when trying to downgrade my card to the “supposed” free card.
It sounds like this is a case of Chase’s system not working properly leading to Chase reps being misinformed.
There’s a post over on Doctor of Credit which suggests that even if you’re product changed to the Traveler card, the $29 fee either won’t be charged or you’ll automatically receive a statement credit: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/chase-removes-annual-fee-on-ihg-rewards-club-traveler-credit-card/#comment-1069619
Wow! I can’t wait to see if Marriott also unveils a better SUB offer in a day or two! I might have a tough decision to make. Thanks again for the advice yesterday Stephen (and Greg)!
You’re welcome!