IHG Accelerate 2016 Fall Promotion Details Are Out

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IHG Rewards has brought back its very popular Accelerate Promotion as the Fall bonus for its members. Last quarter, US-based IHG Rewards members had their own, slightly different, version of Accelerate compared to the rest of the world but this time it would appear that everyone is in the same boat.

As with previous IHG Accelerate promotions the details of the bonuses that can be earned will vary from account to account (you’ll have to log in to IHG Rewards to see what you’ve been offered) but the minimum  bonus appears to be 30,000 points.

The most important thing to stress at this point is that you need to be very careful with some of the terms & conditions so I’ll set out the ones to be aware of below.

IHG Accelerate Fall Promotion – Rules

The full terms & conditions of the Accelerate Promotion can be found here but these are the more important T&Cs you should be aware of:

• The promotion runs between 6 September and 15 December 2016
• You can register for the promotion now but must not book any stays before 6 September if you want them to count towards the promotion (I’ve been caught out by this in the past)
• Kimpton Hotels are excluded from the promotion
• Most group/tour rates will not qualify for the promotion
• Highly discounted rates (usually 50% and over) can often not count as a “qualifying room rate” so check with IHG before you book.
• No retroactive credit if you make a stay before registration for the Accelerate promotion

The Promotions

As in the past, each IHG member’s individual Accelerate promotion offer will consist of a number of challenges that each earn the member points once they’re completed. An added bonus is earned when a set number of challenges have been completed.

I have access to three IHG Rewards accounts and they all have been assigned very different promotions.

Promotion 1 – Joanna

Joanna’s promotion allows her to earn up to 45,000 points and looks like this:

This is the second quarter in a row where Joanna hasn’t been offered a particularly tempting set of challenges (makes a change as it’s normally me with the poor offers!) and I can’t see us booking any stays to help her hit these goals.

To earn any worthwhile number of points Joanna would have to book a minimum of 4 nights (over 2 stays) which, even at the cheapest Holiday Inns, would cost at least $320.

For $320 she would earn 45,000 IHG Rewards points which makes the cost/point 0.71 cents – that’s very poor value when I can generate points for 0.6 cents any time I want.

Promotion 2 – Me

My promotion is different to Joanna’s and the headline number of points I can earn is a lot more interesting….

….but I also have a lot more challenges to negotiate.

60,600 IHG Rewards points is enough for a free night at any IHG property in the world and is a very tempting proposition…but it still has to be value for money.

I already have my stays for 3Q booked and I don’t really want to move any of them over to IHG – I have top-tier status at the chains I’m booked to stay with and I want to make the most of the benefits they’ll be offering…especially the cash-saving benefits like free breakfast.

So, if I’m to try to earn any points from this promotion I’ll have to do it with stays I don’t really need…and that’s where math comes in to play.

Here’s how I see my offers:

• Stay once and get 3,000 points – easy
• Stay 5 nights and earn 10,000 points – that’s a lot of night sand will get expensive so I’m going to ignore this.
• Stay at 3 separate brands and earn 20,800 points – easy, but I’ll have be sure to book a Holiday Inn, a Holiday Inn Extra and one other cheap brand to make sure I keep costs down.
• Book 2 stays on the IHG App and earn 3,200 points
• Book 1 bonus points package and earn 3,600 points – should be easy, I just have to find the cheapest package possible
• Complete 4 challenges and earn 15,000 points – if I miss out the second challenge as planned I’d have to complete all the rest….which is doable.
• Stay in September and earn 5,000 bonus points – easy.

All in all I should be able to earn 50,600 points over 3 one-night stays.

I’ve checked the IHG website and I’m reasonably sure I can hit that target for around $220 which would mean that the points would cost 0.43 cents each….and I’m not taking into account any bonus points for the stays, from the IHG credit card which I’ll use to pay for the stays and from the bonus points package I have to book.

At a cost of 0.43 cents per point I’m probably going to go ahead with this promotion as I already know that I’m going to be needing quite a few points for trips next year and these will come in very useful.

Promotion 3 – Dormant Account

This is probably the more confusing of the three promotions that I’ve seen because it’s not very clear what you have to do to earn the points.

The offer should be simple enough as there are only 2 challenges….but the second challenge isn’t very clear on what triggers the 30,000 points.

The T&Cs for that particular challenge don’t help that much but I’m leaning towards the idea that the 30,000 points are earned after just 2 stays….which isn’t too bad if that’s the case.

If you’ve been given this offer I would check with IHG before you decide what to do but, on the face of it, it looks like two stays at super-cheap Holiday Inn properties (somewhere around $130 in total) should earn you 36,000 points if one of the stays is in September.

That’s the same as buying IHG points at 0.36 cents each which is an excellent price to pay. What would make it even better is if you could actually use those stays for a trips you have to do (or were already planning).

Bottom Line

Joanna’s promotion isn’t really worth considering by both my promotion and the other promotion I’ve highlighted are definitely worth investigating further.

Please don’t forget the most crucial thing of all – don’t make any bookings before 6 September because they will not count toward the Fall 2016 Accelerate promotion.

It’s all to easy to take a look at your challenges, to check pricing on the IHG webpage and, when you suddenly see a great rate that you could use, to book a stay there and then. Don’t! I’ve been there and it’s very annoying when you realise what you’ve done.

If you’ve been offered something different for your Accelerate promotion (and I have no doubt that a lot of people will have been offered something different) then please post details in the comments section below so we can see what IHG is putting out there.

Note: If you weren’t given a good Accelerate promotion but you still need points then IHG has an 80% bonus on points purchases right now. That may be of use.