Priority Club has cobbled together a potentially lucrative but also confusing “stay 2 nights, get a free night” promotion. Registration is required.
It’s actually two promotions in one. First, every two nights from May 4 through July 3 earns a free night, up to a maximum of 4 free nights. Those free nights can be used between July 3 and December 26.
These free nights are redeemable any night of the week, not just weekends like Starwood’s free night bonus offer. Japanese hotels and members with addresses in Japan are excluded from the free night promotion.
Perhaps most importantly, while earning credit towards free nights you do not earn your normal points or miles.
The second piece of the offer is double points earning, instead of free nights. That doesn’t preclude earning points (naturally).
It’s worth noting that the free nights offer appears to apply only to reservations made after registering for the promo, while the double points offer would seem to apply to all reservations during the promo regardless of when those reservations were made.
That may swing the decision about whether to pick free nights or double points for some, though of course folks that have pre-existing cancellable bookings could cancel their reservations and re-book although of course check to see that room rates haven’t gone up in the meantime! (It’s good practice with cancellable reservations to check rates again anyway, sometimes they go down…)
Small print #5: “Room availability: Members may determine if a hotel has Free Nights available by visiting http://www.priorityclub.com/bookfreenights and searching by city or date. Rooms are limited, subject to prior sale and may be unavailable during high demand periods. Each participating hotel has limited room inventory available for Free Nights. Free Night rooms are subject to the maximum occupancy requirements of the hotel and local regulations.”
It’s a good promo, but full of restrictions, so it pays to pay attention. I put together a chart comparing this promo with the SPG free weekend nights promo, and I hope some will find it helpful: http://img2.imageshack.us/img2/422/freenightcomparisony.jpg
There’s also an extensive discussion on FT:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/intercontinental-hotels-priority-club-inter-continental-ambassador/945364-free-nights-promotion.html