IHG has finally announced some changes as to how they’ll be handling elite status requirements and anniversary night certificates. This update is definitely welcome, but there’s a good chance they’ll have to revisit this in the coming months.
You can find the latest updates here. Here’s a quick summary of what’s changing.
Elite Status
They’re reducing the status earning requirements by 25%-30% depending on the status level. Here are both the old and new requirements:
- Gold – Old criteria required 10,000 qualifying points or 10 qualifying nights, now requires 7,000 qualifying points or 7 qualifying nights – a 30% decrease.
- Platinum – Old criteria required 40,000 qualifying points or 40 qualifying nights, now requires 30,000 qualifying points or 30 qualifying nights – a 25% decrease.
- Spire – Old criteria required 75,000 qualifying points or 75 qualifying nights, now requires 55,000 qualifying points or 55 qualifying nights – a 26.67% decrease.
Anniversary Night Certificates
If you had any anniversary night certificates expiring (earned through your credit card(s)), those will be extended. Any certificates expiring from March 1, 2020 will now be valid until December 31, 2020. All certificates that are issued in 2020 will have an expiry date of 18 months.
Cancellation & Change Policy
All bookings made by April 6, 2020 can be changed or cancelled for stays up to June 30, 2020. If you cancel, refunds might take 90 days to be processed. If you change the reservation, a higher rate might apply.
IHG is removing non-refundable rates for new bookings until later in 2020, so all rates will now have greater flexibility. It’s not clear if prices will be higher as a result of this increased flexibility.
Points Expiration
IHG Rewards Club points usually expire after 12 months of inactivity for members without status (it never expires for Gold, Platinum and Spire members which is a great program feature). If you’re an IHG Rewards Club member without any status and your points were due to expire between April 1 and June 30, 2020, your points now won’t expire until December 31, 2020 which gives you more time to ensure there’s some kind of activity on your account.
Quick Thoughts
It’s good to see IHG finally making some kind of announcement about status, anniversary night certificates, etc., but some of these changes result in more questions rather than answers.
For example, they’ve reduced status earning requirements by 25%-30%, but that supposes that travel will be back to normal within 3-4 months. The way things are going, I can’t imagine that’s the case, so they’ll likely have to revisit and revise these earning thresholds again in a few months time.
As for the anniversary night certificates, it’s good that they’re extending these, but they haven’t advised when that’ll be done. My wife had a certificate which expired in mid-March but that’s completely disappeared. I tried contacting IHG through their online chat feature several times this past week, but each time they hung up on me (or whatever the virtual version of hanging up is) after waiting in line for a while. This new policy suggests that expired certificate will be extended to December 31, 2020, but for now it’s gone into the ether.
They’ve also advised that certificates issued in 2020 will have an expiry date 18 months in the future. My wife’s new certificate was issued in the last week or so and shows an expiry date of March 24, 2021, so has a 12 month expiry date rather than 18 month. The update on their website says that they’ll be reaching out to cardmembers directly about this, so hopefully that’ll give more indication as to what’s happening and when their system will be updated to reflect the correct expiration dates. (Update: Following Steve’s comment below, we just used the Chat feature on their website again and this time spoke to an agent immediately with no wait. She added a free night certificate to my wife’s account with an expiry date of December 31, 2020, so this time it was quick and easy to sort out. Here’s how to chat to an IHG agent online.)
Something that’ll be concerning for some people is that IHG is advising refunds for prepaid rates could take up to 90 days to process. I’m assuming that’s due to most IHG properties being franchised and they’re facing a cash crunch, but waiting up to three months to be refunded for an expensive hotel reservation that the hotel themselves might have cancelled is far too long in my opinion.
We’re now waiting on Marriott to let us know how they’ll be changing their elite status requirements.
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[…] booked reservation due to COVID-19. The certificate expired and disappeared from the account, but IHG subsequently announced that any certificates that expired in March 2020 would be extended to December 31, […]
[…] free night certificate. This post on Frequent Miler says that I don’t have to worry because IHG is going to extend the expiration of all certificates from March 1, 2020, so they’re good for the rest of the year. Free nights issued in 2020 will […]
@Steven Pepper, Is there a statement on the IHG site about extending the free night certificates? Since it didn’t work for our previous travels during the year, we had planned to use it in NYC in early March. We were about to book when the virus hit hard in our local community. It was expiring in mid-March and I called IHG, mentioning the virus, and they told me it was only good for bookings up to a week after expiration (March 22). Now it is gone.
So I am going to try the chat feature as you suggested worked for your wife.
That’s strange – the page I linked to in the post had their stance on free night certificates, but it’s not listed on that page anymore. Hope the chat feature works for you too in getting it extended.
Well, I got bounced out of chat 3 times over the course of 75 minutes. The last time they gave a phone number to call which turned out to be reservations. After listening to my “tale of woe”, the agent connected me with a Rewards Club agent who extended my certificate until 12/31/20. They are all working from home.
Perhaps as you noted, the one that was just issued March 2020, due to expire March 2021, will be extended for 18 months when IHG works through the process.
Not sure my husband will want to travel by year end unless this virus is more under control – we are seniors, living just outside NYC, so you can understand the concern. But at least we will not have “lost” the certificate as of now, so thanks so much for your post describing this so at least we have an option.
I’m glad you managed to finally get it extended 🙂
This is confusing wording, can you help to clarify?
Anniversary Night Certificates
If you had any anniversary night certificates expiring (earned through your credit card(s)), those will be extended. Any certificates expiring from March 1, 2020 will now be valid until December 31, 2020. All certificates that are issued in 2020 will have an expiry date of 18 months.
This basically means that if your certificate was earned from March 1 to December 31, 2019, it’ll now have an expiry date of December 31, 2019. If your certificate was issued from January 1, 2020, its expiry date will be 18 months from when it was issued.
[…] Extending Elite Status and Benefits for One Year. IHG Rewards came up with a much weaker policy by extending status requirements only but they will likely follow along too I […]
[…] Hat tip to FM […]
Where’s the online chat? I can’t find it on the website.
I just published a separate post explaining how to do that https://frequentmiler.com/how-to-chat-to-an-ihg-online-agent/ I’ll add a link in this post too 🙂
Thanks for the tip & link. It worked & I got my free night back that expired last month.
That’s great news!
Just extended my 4/12/2020 night until 12/31/2020. No one waiting for chat and it took all of 5-7 minutes.
Thanks for the heads up – I was just able to do the same with no wait.
If this is all they do on RA qualifications, bye bye IHG
G. It was a great 16 years, but I will stick with Hyatt, thank you.