Tag Archives for ihg rewards.
IHG One Rewards will give you 500 points for downloading their app. All you need to do to get the points is log in – no hotel stays required.
500 points are worth about $2.50. In effect, IHG is paying people to download their mobile app, as long as it’s done by June 30, 2024. They call it “the easiest 500 points ever.”
The CEO of IHG says that the revamp of the chain’s loyalty program, IHG One Rewards, is starting to pay off. Every company says the bets they’re currently making are great, and they’ll marshal out of context numbers to prove the point.
Here all we know is that travel is rebounding broadly, and IHG has historically gotten less mileage out of loyalty than competitors, so there’s nowhere to go but up.
The new IHG One Rewards elite program offers a huge improvement in elite benefits.
Diamond breakfast doesn’t start until June, but some hotels are rolling it out early, giving us a window into what to expect. Benefit delivery is always tough, and some hotels are going to be more generous adhering to the spirit of the program than others.
Earlier I wrote about how Chase is seriously improving the IHG® Rewards Club Premier Credit Card.
It turns out that the card isn’t just adding new benefits. They’ve substantially increased the up front bonus, as well.
When I spoke with IHG’s Senior Vice President of Loyalty last week about the chain’s revamp of its elite program that is now in progress, she told me that they would be offering an award discount this week for top tier elites.
In fact they’re out now with an offer of 20% off redemptions and it is available to co-brand credit card customers.
There have been several stories reporting one piece of change that’s happening at IHG Rewards – the introduction of a new mid-tier level, a change in the name of their top tier, and new qualification requirements for status.
I spoke with Heather Balsley this morning. She’s Senior Vice President of Global Loyalty and Partnerships at IHG Hotels & Resorts. And she shared some other pieces of what’s changing now, and what’s coming in the next few months where the focus will be on elite benefits, the area where she seemed to agree IHG has historically had the biggest opportunities for improvement.
IHG is converting expiring credit card free nights to 25,000 points if you call and ask. If you do not call, you get nothing for certificates set to sunset after December 31, 2021.
There are two elements to loyalty marketing: recognition and reward. The former is the elite program, how you treat your best customers. The latter is rebate for their spend.
We can make some overall claims about best that will not apply to every member, every time, with their own subjective preferences. We can do this by looking at the overall earn-and-burn program, and by comparing the major elite benefits each program offers.
Several hotel franchisees are suing IHG making two basic claims, they’re required to buy supplies from the company at significant markup and they’re getting cheated by IHG Rewards.
Some hotels offer rates that include breakfast. You need to figure out how likely to buy breakfast you are – and how much you’ll save. Sometimes the ‘breakfast included’ price is really just the room rate plus the cost of breakfast. And if you skip breakfast even one day, for instance you leave too early in the morning on the day you check out, you come out a loser on the deal.
But some hotels during the pandemic have been pulling a breakfast rate scam on guests.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
