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IHG’s new Your World Sale offers 15% – 30% discount on US, Canada, and Latin America stays booked by November 29 for travel through March 31.
They’re also promoting additional points offers:
- 10,000 bonus points for joining the InterContinental’s Ambassador program (which is the elite status that applies at Intercontinental hotels, versus IHG Rewards Club status)
- 2000 bonus points for joining and making qualifying dine spend with Rewards Club Dining
- 3000 bonus points on Trip Extras
- 3000 bonus points with Hertz
Getting a bonus with joining Intercontinental Ambassador is nice if it’s something you’re going to do anyway.
The problem with these offers otherwise is that they’re just not very good. That’s because an IHG point is worth about 3/5ths of a cent. So while 3000 points sounds like a decent amount of points, it’s something to at least pay attention to when we’re talking about most currencies, here it’s ~ $18.
Rewards Network dining for miles will frequently offer 4000 airline miles as a signup bonus. That gets you roughly $60 in value.
Heck you can frequently buy points for $0.006 or less, you’re better off doing that than transferring Chase points or pushing for bonuses. You can buy IHG points at a price of $0.00575 when purchasing 20,000 or more through December 8 thanks to a limited-time 100% bonus offer.
The IHG Rewards Club program is great for top tier elite member rebates, weak on elite benefits, weak for its inability to redeem anything other than a base room. Pick up bonuses for stays you’ll make anyway, but the low per point value is something they count on members not understanding when it comes time to putting actual spend on one of their credit cards or choosing their program over another for partner points-earning.
The IHG credit card is one of the most valuable credit cards I have. The annual free night for $49 got me an $800 room during the World Series, and it overlapped with the previous year’s night, so a total of $1400 in value for the two nights.
Recently you could buy points at .43125 with cash and points.
If you stay at Intercontinentals, I find very few reasons to actually pay for a hotel night, except using the 2 for 1 weekend night that comes with Ambassador.
The set benefits you get for approximately $200 far exceed the price.
Just the 4pm checkout would save you a full night’s stay at the Interconny in Times Square.
Also, I’ve been erroneously comped suites and club access at a number of Intercontinentals.
In Medellin Ambassador status got 3 people unlimited drinks and bar food (which was basically a full meal) for 3 hours each night . That’s one place I’d pay for the room at $109.
If you do a breakdown of the actual cost of a 60,000 point hotel night, at a purchase price of .43125 /per point ,it works out to $207 inclusive after the 10% credit card rebate and the 10% ambassador rebate. Throw in the miles earned buying the points.
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