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As I’ve mentioned in the past, the questions I get asked most often are always about how I accumulate enough points for the flights and hotel stays that Joanna and I enjoy. My answer is always the same – there’s no one way that I or anyone else amasses miles & points, it’s always a variety of methods. In this post I’m going to go over one of the methods I use to build up my IHG points and I’ll show how I accumulated a healthy amount of points for a relatively low spend.
Right now I’m most of the way though planning a big trip for Joanna, mini-Joanna and me for next year and my miles and points balances are taking quite a hammering (but hey, that’s what they’re for).
We’ll be staying in 3 different cities and, the way things are panning out right now, we’ll be using a combination of Marriott points, Starwood Starpoints, Hyatt Points and IHG Rewards points for our stays.
I have all the Hyatt and Starwood points I need for our trip but I’m short of Marriott and IHG points.
I’m not too worried about the Marriott points because, as I explained in a post on Friday, Marriott allows you to book reward nights even if you don’t have the required number of points in your account. That’s allowed me to lock in the reward nights that we’ll need and I don’t have to worry that, by the time I have enough points for the reservations, the reward night availability will have disappeared.
With IHG it’s a different matter.
With IHG Rewards, if you don’t have the points for a reward night, you have the following options:
- Pay cash for the room
- Pay with a combination of cash & points
- Buy points directly from IHG to make up the shortfall – there’s a sale on right now at 0.64 cents/point
- Manufacture some points from IHG at 0.66 cents/point
None of those options really appeal but, as luck would have it, August is the last month of IHG’s summer Accelerate Promotion.
I have been meaning to make more of an effort with the summer Accelerate promotion but haven’t got around to doing anything with it – this was a good time to make a start.
Making the Most Of My IHG Accelerate Promotion
My summer IHG Accelerate promotion offers me the chance to earn up to 50,000 IHG Rewards points…..
….but as I have no intention of booking 5 nights (the second challenge) the maximum number of points I can really earn is 40,000.
I had a look on the IHG App (challenge #3 dictates that I need to make the bookings via the app to get the bonus points) and found two properties that would work well:
- The Holiday Inn Heathrow Terminal 5
- The Holiday Inn London Heathrow Ariel
Considering how often I pass through Heathrow these properties are very convenient and, more importantly, they had very good room rates.
For my first reservation I booked the Holiday Inn Heathrow Terminal 5 as a Points & Cash booking (to satisfy the conditions of challenge #4) and that cost $70 + 5,000 points (annoyingly the promotion offering a 12% discount on cash & points hadn’t kicked in at the time of my booking).
I booked second reservation (at the Holiday Inn London Heathrow Ariel) with my IHG Rewards credit card and that cost me the princely sum of £45 or $59:
My total outlay for the two nights was $129 and 5,000 points (plus a bit of my time).
In return, when my points post from the IHG Accelerate promotion, I’ll receive the following:
- 5,000 points for booking a stay
- 3,200 points for booking both of my stays through the IHG App
- 1,000 points for booking a stay using points & cash
- 30,800 points for completing 3 out of the 4 challenges IHG set
Total Points Earned : 40,000
Allowing for the 5,000 points I used on the points and cash booking I effectively paid $129 for 35,000 points…and that’s a cost of just 0.37 cents per point.
Bottom Line
I didn’t need either of those stays so this exercise was purely about banking some IHG points for as little a I could manage,
When you consider that the best price we’ve ever been able to buy IHG points at is 0.55 cents per point the price I paid looks pretty good.
The 35,000 points I banked will go towards a room at one of the top InterContinental properties costing 60,000 points per night so, extrapolating the cost, shows that I am effectively paying a little over $220/night for the hotel room.
I’ll take that price for a night at a top InterContinental any day 🙂
Note: IHG has released details of the Fall Accelerate Promotion which runs from 6 September to 15 December. Take a look at what offers you’ve been selected for to see if you can parlay any of them into equally cheap (or perhaps even cheaper) points.
Wait – the different promos stack?!
If you’re asking if, for example, the “book via the app” and “book a stay” stack then yes, they do.
Yes I am – that’s amazing. Thanks!
Just be careful…as you’ll see from other comments on this post there is a lot of doubt as to whether or not points & cash bookings stack with any stay challenges.
Your points night will not qualify
It has already posted to my account so it did qualify.
Considering one of my challenges was to book a cash & points night I’m not sure why you thought it wouldn’t count.
Because C&P generally does not qualify as a “stay”.
That may well be the case and we’ll have to see what happens. I took the precaution of checking with IHG before I booked and I have an email from them saying that the C&P stay will count…I’ll be using that to get the points if they don’t post automatically.
Good luck with that!
“A Stay constitutes a “Qualifying Stay” when member pays qualifying rates, which include most business and leisure rates at InterContinental®, Crowne Plaza®, Hotel Indigo®, Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites®, Candlewood Suites®, EVEN® or HUALUXETM hotels worldwide.
Bonus points are not issued for Non-Qualifying Room Rates or Non-Qualifying Stays.
“Non-Qualifying Room Rates” or “Non-Qualifying Stay” include the following: any stay at a Kimpton Hotel, net wholesale individual and group rate, certain package rates, employee discount rate, friends and family rate, crew rate, special discounted contract rates, seasonal worker/crew rate, 50% travel club discount rate, travel industry discount rate, distressed passenger rate,
IHG® Rewards Club Reward Nights/Airline Hotel Reward rate,
rates booked through third party web sites, complimentary hotel Stays
and any other rates not defined as a Qualifying Room Rate at IHG’s sole discretion.”
And that’s precisely why I emailed IHG to get clarification – Points & Cash nights aren’t specifically mentioned in the T&Cs although Reward nights are,
I was also concerned with P&C nights. My understanding of the T&C was that P&C is not counted as a stay in any challenge except for Stay Less and Earn. But did you mean after the two P&C stays, the first and third challenges have been marked as completed and total of 40000 has already been posted to you account?
I’ve had P&C stays count AND not count in the past which is why I sought confirmation from IHG before I made my bookings. So far I haven’t had my P&C booking register as a stay….but then I haven’t had my cash booking register as a stay yet either. IHG are notoriously slow when it comes to updating the Accelerate milestones so I’m going to give them a bit ore time before I challenge them.
As far as I’m concerned I have an email from IHG explicitly confirming that my P&C stay will count so I expect them to honor this. We’ll see what happens 🙂
I think you got hosed.
[…] This is the second “quick look” post I’ve done of Holiday Inn properties at Heathrow (the first was the Holiday Inn Heathrow T5) and, once again, my visit was purely as a result of the IHG Summer Accelerate promotion I discussed earlier this week. […]
[…] How I “Bought” IHG Points At 0.37 Cents Each […]
Any update on how things turned out? Per your advice, I emailed IHG too on whether a Points and Cash stay counts and am waiting to hear back.
Actually yes….it’s going absolutely terribly! 🙂 Neither of my stays have tracked via the iPad App so I’m in a full on battle with IHG right now. I promise an update when I have more info