IHG Rewards Club, the hotel loyalty program formerly known as Priority Club that services the Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Intercontinental and related brands, updated their terms and conditions to account for a new type of reward.

Digital Rewards. Selection of IHG® Rewards Club Digital Rewards will direct you to TFC International Limited (“TFC”), a third party provider which hosts this private label web site (the “Site”) and provides digital media download and streaming services (the “Services”) designed to enable you to access and purchase or redeem legal digital content (the “Content”). The Content may be transferred to you from third party websites, by third party content suppliers acting on TFC’s instructions. The Services are for your own personal and non-commercial use and you are not authorized to make any copies of any downloads or streams other than for personal use. Any obligation that Six Continents Hotels, Inc. (SCH) may have to you in connection with the points redeemed for digital downloads will be fully discharged upon your receipt of the electronic confirmation from TFC. The point conversion ratios between IHG® Rewards Club and TFC may change at any time at SCH’s complete discretion. For full terms and conditions, visit: https://digitalrewards.ihg.com/us/terms-conditions (NOTE: If the Digital Rewards catalog is not available in your local language, it will display in a global English version).

Digital Rewards can be accessed here (you’ll be prompted that you have to be logged into your account to see this site).

In addition to traditional rewards like room nows, Point Breaks, Last Minute Reward Nights, and Hotels Anywhere, and points transfers to miles, gift cards, and charitable gifts as well as merchandise, they’ve introduced new options under this ‘digital’ rubric:

Anything to make members feel like they’re getting value out of their points, and having lower-priced more attainable rewards certainly does that. The idea is to keep members engaged.

Although I’ve always believed that cashing out for low value rewards fails to differentiate a program from its rebate-style competitors, fails to capture imagination or aspirations, and ultimately takes away from long-term loyalty that comes from cashing out for the sorts of things consumers feel as though they wouldn’t be able to get but-for their participation in a program.

I do like offers such as these when a program has expiring points and any activity at all extends the life of those points, they can be great low-cost engagement.

But IHG Rewards already offers points that don’t expire. So I don’t see myself getting any value out of this. Do you?

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