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IHG Rewards Club is sending out targeted offers to members to incentivize them to stay by the end of the year. My wife and I received different offers awarding bonus points, but a reader reports getting an offer for a free night certificate.
The Deal
- IHG is sending out targeted offers – here are some examples:
- Stay 3 nights & earn 10,000 bonus points
- Direct link to registration (this won’t work if you’re not targeted)
- Stay 1 night & earn 5,000 bonus points
- Direct link to registration (this won’t work if you’re not targeted)
- Stay twice & earn a free night certificate (capped at 40,000 points, must be redeemed by May 31, 2021)
- Stay 3 nights & earn 10,000 bonus points
Key Terms
These terms are for the 10,000 point offer; the 5,000 point offer terms are similar.
- Must be an IHG Rewards Club member and must register your member number in advance to participate in this Offer.
- 10,000 bonus points will be deposited into your account after completing 3 qualifying night(s) between October 15, 2020 and December 31, 2020 at InterContinental, Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, Kimpton, EVEN, avid, voco, Regent Hotels & Resorts, Principal Hotels, or HUALUXE hotels worldwide.
- IHG Army Hotels, Mr. & Mrs. Smith properties, and Six Senses Hotels Resorts Spas are excluded from this Offer.
- A Qualifying night is defined as a minimum 1-night stay booked under a Qualifying Rate, with total spend exceeding $30 per night.
- Only one room per member per Qualifying Stay will be eligible.
- If more than one member checks into the same room, only one member is eligible for the Offer.
- No retroactive credit will be awarded for Stays prior to registration.
- This Offer is subject to standard IHG Rewards Club Membership Terms and Conditions and earning structure, which can be obtained here.
- Please allow up to 3 weeks for bonus points to be posted onto your account.
- The use of certain rates may be subject to applicable agreement(s). Any misuse of such rates is considered a fraud activity subject to IHG Rewards Club Membership terms and conditions. IHG reserves the right to remove a member’s bonus points award or cancel a member’s account if fraudulent use of the Promotion is detected.
- To the extent permitted by applicable law, IHG Rewards Club reserves the right to cancel, suspend and/or modify the Promotion/Offer at any time with or without notice.
- To the extent permitted by applicable law, IHG reserves the right of final interpretation of this Offer.
- This exclusive Offer is valid and applies to the original recipient only.
- Members must make any promotional inquiries by 60 days from the end of the campaign period.
Quick Thoughts
My wife and I both received a targeted offer, with the subject line “Hey, Shae! Check out this exclusive offer…” and “Hey, Stephen! Check out this exclusive offer…” respectively.
Her offer for 10,000 bonus points is the more generous of the two, although my offer for 5,000 bonus points is easier to attain seeing as I only have to stay one night whereas she has to stay three nights to earn her bonus.
Reader Franz reported in the Frequent Miler Insiders Facebook group that he received an offer for a free night certificate when staying twice. The certificate has a cap of 40,000 points, so it’s the same as the anniversary night certificates you receive on the IHG Premier and IHG Select credit cards at renewal each year. Despite the fact that he’d have to redeem the free night by May 31, 2021, it’s a decent offer. The only requirement is that he stay twice, so it could potentially be worth mattress running if he booked two one-night stays which were both cheap.
The great thing about these targeted offers is that they stack with IHG’s latest promotion. That offers double points for every stay, as well as 10,000 bonus points on your first stay when paying with an IHG credit card. If Franz has an IHG credit card, he could potentially pay less than $150 total for two stays and earn 10,000 bonus points from IHG’s latest promo, a free night certificate worth up to 40,000 points and more than 5,000 points for the stays based on base points, double points from the latest promo, 50% bonus points for Platinum status and 10x if paying with an IHG Premier card.
IHG is certainly tempting me to make a reservation with them. We already have the next two months of hotel stays booked and there isn’t really anything in there that I want to change as we’ve either booked cheap points stays with Hilton, Hyatt and IHG or cheap Hyatt paid stays which I wouldn’t want to move due to their generous 3x + double elite nights promotion.
The one potential outlet to take advantage of my 5,000 bonus points offer is a one night stay I was planning on booking at a La Quinta. It’s a quick overnight stay which costs $72 with tax and doesn’t charge a pet fee. The La Quinta stay would be cheaper, but an IHG stay would be more rewarding. Here’s how it all stacks up.
La Quinta (Wyndham)
- Cost – $72 with tax & no pet fee.
- $3.60 cashback (based on 5% back as a statement credit from Visa SavingsEdge)
- 1,000 base points (Wyndham offers 10x points per dollar or 1,000 points per stay – whichever is more)
- 7,500 bonus points (this would be my second stay during the latest Wyndham promo)
- 576 bonus points (I was just approved for the Wyndham business card & this earns 8x on Wyndham stays)
- Total cost = $68.40
- Total points earnings = 9,076 Wyndham Rewards points
Candlewood Suites (IHG)
- Cost – $115.76 with tax & including pet fee
- 480 Membership Rewards (based on 6x rate from Rakuten for IHG stays right now – that’s calculated on the pre-tax rate of $80)
- 2,400 points (800 base at 10x, 800 bonus at 10x from Spire Elite status & 800 bonus from double points promotion)
- 5,000 bonus points (from this targeted offer)
- 10,000 bonus points (from latest promo by paying with my IHG card)
- 1,158 bonus points (10x by paying for stay on IHG Premier card)
- Total cost = $115.76
- Total points earnings = 18,558 IHG Rewards Club points + 480 Membership Rewards
This is why it can help to write things down sometimes. When initially writing this post, it was a toss-up in my mind as to whether to book that one night stay with Wyndham or IHG. Looking at the summaries for each option though, IHG is the much better choice in my mind.
It’s $47.36 more expensive and money is often my biggest consideration when planning out where we’re going to be staying week-by-week. Our road trip budget is $100 per day, so we rarely spend $115 per night on hotel rooms as that $100 also incorporates food, gas, activities, cell phone bills, etc. However, those points earnings tip it in IHG’s favor quite considerably.
Wyndham has three redemption levels – 7,500, 15,000 and 30,000. Redemptions at the 7,500 level are rarely worth it because you can usually pay for stays at those properties for ~$50. I wouldn’t want to pay 30,000 points for a Wyndham property, so I imagine we’ll only ever redeem Wyndham Rewards points at the 15,000 point level. That means the 9,076 points we’d earn from the La Quinta stay would only get us 2/3 of the way to a free night (my new Wyndham business card offers a 10% discount on award nights).
18,558 IHG Rewards Club points are worth significantly more to me though. We usually redeem points in the 10,000-12,500 point range now that IHG has moved to dynamic pricing. We book in four night increments to take advantage of the fourth night free benefit on the IHG Premier card and also get a 10% points rebate from my old IHG Select card. That means 18,558 points can get us two free nights with points to spare, so paying an extra $47.36 makes that worthwhile.
To be honest, it probably would’ve been worth booking that one night stay with IHG anyway, but the 5,000 bonus points from this targeted offer has done enough to attract my attention. Good job IHG – your promotion has done exactly what it was designed to do!
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Thanks for the math-up, Stephen.
Any chance I can figure out how to stack this with the $40 off $200 Amex offer at Hotel Indigo? I realize I can do that, but I don’t want to miss out on the 10,000 points by paying with my IHG card. Is there anything in the terms that say I can’t pay $200 on my Amex and the balance on my IHG card?
Hmmm…..good question. I’m afraid I don’t know how things are coded on IHG’s end. It might be that if they see any IHG spend on their credit card and you’ve booked a stay with them then it’ll track. If so, you could stack it with the Hotel Indigo offer.
However, if they match things up to ensure the amount you spent on your card correlates with the amount charged for a stay, that wouldn’t work.
Personally, I’d risk it. If you pay with your IHG card only, you earn 10k points but miss out on $40. If you split tender and it doesn’t track as hoped, you miss out on 10k points but get $40 back. If it does stack, you get both the 10k points and $40 back. While I’d rather have 10k points than $40, definitely getting the $40 statement credit helps mitigate some of the risk as it means you won’t miss out on both things.
Excellent analysis. About the same as what I came up with, but with slightly different methodology. I used poker math. 50% of the time I get 10k points and 50% of the time I get 0 points. 50% of 10k points = ~$30, and so $40+$30 = $70 if I split the charge, which is more (theoretically) than I’d earn with 10k points straight up (~$60).
If I follow through with the stay I’ll try to remember to come back to report my success/failure.
San Antonio Riverwalk, here I come!
Enjoy the Riverwalk! We spent 10 weeks visiting Texas a couple of years ago and that was one of my favorite places.
Oh, great! I moved to Austin from California last year and have only spent 1 afternoon in SA. My girl and I are badly in need of our first Covid vacation, and staying in Austin just doesn’t seem appealing. This promo is enough to get us out of the house.
Seeing as you’re in Austin, be sure to visit Round Rock Donuts just north of the city. They have great kolaches and their donuts are awesome. They also have a Texas-sized donut which, despite it’s enormous size, is surprisingly delicious. It thankfully lasts a few days as it takes that long for two people to eat it.
I’ve heard this recommendation before and perhaps seen you post it. I’m not a donut guy at all and that’s a good 30 minute drive from my house, but perhaps one day when I have an out-of-town visitor again I’ll make the drive. 🙂
Just wanted to report back. The stay was great, and I was able to split the charge as planned. Amex confirmed via chat that the $40 credit is coming in the next few days, and today the IHG bonus points posted. It staked successfully! I received 600 points for the welcome bonus, 3,576 points for base rate + 50% Platinum bonus, 10k for the targeted promo from this post, and another 10k from the credit card bonus. Strangely I haven’t gotten the double points promo, nor the Best Rate Guarantee bonus. Regardless, I received over 24,000 points for this stay. At $0.006 per point, that’s $144 in value. If I get the other points I expect, it’ll be $171 in point value. After cash back and the Amex offer, I’ll be out of pocket $232, so a $61 net stay. Thanks for your help, Stephen!
That’s great news! Thanks for reporting back – it’s really helpful to have a data point like this as it’ll hopefully come in useful for future stays knowing this is how IHG’s system works.
[…] due to all the bonus points we’d receive. I wrote more about that over on Frequent Miler, so check out this post for how those calculations […]
[…] Hat tip to FM […]
I got the free cert for staying twice offer and the 10,000 points for staying once!
I have one stay already booked and I’ll make sure I book a second stay at a cheap place to get the cert.
We have a couple of IHG stays coming up that were booked with Chase free night certificates. I assume these wouldn’t count as stays for the free night promotion?
Unfortunately not – it has to be a qualifying rate of at least $30.