IHG has pulled it’s incredible Diamond elite status promotion (it’s now wait-and-see time)

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Yesterday, I wrote about an incredible promotion in which IHG One Rewards was giving away top-tier Diamond elite status through the end of the year to anyone who wanted it. Unsurprisingly, less than 24 hours later the promotion appears to have been pulled.

If you have been trying to sign up for the IHG promotion that set the miles and points world alight yesterday and have been coming up across an issue where the registration page keeps asking you for a promo code, it’s because the promo has been pulled.

There was no need to enter a registration code yesterday as it was already embedded within the link to the registration page so it looks like IHG has been quick to close down what was almost certainly not meant to be a widely publicized deal.

Now, for everyone who managed to sign up and who sees “Diamond Elite” on their IHG One Rewards profile page, it’s wait-and-see time.

Will IHG allow everyone who registered successfully to keep that status for the next 11 weeks or will it decide to start unwinding the status boosts?

More importantly, if IHG doesn’t unwind the status boosts, will it still allow those who have registered to keep that status if they meet the original terms of the promotion (stay 10 nights by 31 December 2022)?

I suspect (and I’m just speculating) that there will be no half-measures here. IHG will either have to withdraw the whole promotion (take away everyone’s newly minted Diamond status) or leave things as they are because if they simply go halfway, how will the new Diamond elites know not to waste money on bookings that won’t get their status renewed through 2023?

You could argue that IHG could simply email everyone who registered to say that 10 nights consumed by 31 December will no longer see them keep Diamond Elite status next year, but considering how terrible IHG is at communicating with customers under regular conditions, I have trouble imagining that happening here.

Joanna was one of the (many) people who registered successfully yesterday (I didn’t bother to register as I have no need for IHG Diamond status this year or next) so I’ll be keeping an interested eye on her account to see if IHG rolls her status back to “member” or if she’s given a pass.

As I said in the article yesterday, no one should be making any non-refundable IHG reservations off the back of this promotion as we don’t know how this is going to play out. Everyone should now wait and see what happens in the next few days before starting to make any firm plans – I suspect that we’ll know a lot more by Monday morning.

Bottom line

If you didn’t jump on the IHG Diamond elite promotion yesterday you’re now too late to get involved as it looks like IHG has pulled the plug. As far as I can tell (and at the time of writing), everyone who registered successfully still has Diamond elite status showing in their IHG One Rewards account but depending on how generous those running IHG One Rewards are currently feeling, that may change over the coming days.