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Back in December, IHG left it as late as it possibly could before extending the expiration date of all the free night certificates that were due to expire at the end of 2020. Now, IHG has confirmed that it is extending the expiration date of yet more free night certificates.
Certificates Originally Set To Expire In 2020
If you have an IHG Rewards free night certificate that was set to expire in 2020 (probably on 31 December 2020), IHG has already reissued you with a new certificate with an expiry date of 31 August 2021 and you should be able to see this in your IHG Rewards account right now.
This is something that IHG did towards the very end of December 2020 and certificates with an August 2021 expiry date are not impacted by what IHG has now announced.
Certificates Set To Expire In 2021
Anyone who earned a free night certificate on the anniversary of their IHG Rewards Club Premier Card or their legacy IHG Rewards Select Card in early 2020 will have been issued with a certificate that has an expiry date in 2021.
If your certificate was earned after March in 2020 it will have been given an 18-month validity so there hasn’t been much to worry about so far. However, if you earned your certificate in the first few months of 2020, its expiration date will be looming and you may be wondering if you’ll get a chance to use it.
Fortunately, IHG appears to realize that the world is not even close to returning to normality and that a significant number of certificate holders either can’t travel right now or feel that traveling now would be unwise, so it has decided to help out.
All IHG Rewards Club free night certificates with an original expiration date in 2021 are having their expiration date extended to 31 December 2021. This is regardless of when in 2021 a certificate was set to expire.
The extended expiration dates will appear on certificates by 15 February 2021 (some certificates may have already had their expiration dates extended).
If you have a certificate that’s set to expire in January (i.e. before the extension is due to happen), don’t worry. Based on what happened last year when IHG extended the expiration dates of its free night certificates back in April 2020, certificates that have already expired and disappeared from accounts when IHG comes to extend the expiration dates will reappear with the new expiration date.
Bottom Line
If you have an IHG Rewards Club free night certificate with a 2021 expiration date (and it’s a certificate whose expiration date has not been extended in the past), your certificate’s expiration date will be extended to 31 December 2021 by the middle of February.
Currently, successful new applicants for the 
[…] Hat tip to Traveling For Miles […]
Does this include Ambassador Weekend night certificates (ie BOGOs)?
No, the statement IHG has put on its page specifically refers to the IHG Rewards Club anniversary certificates. This doesn’t mean that the ambassador certs. won’t get extended but, for now, there doesn’t appear to be any news about them (as far as I can see)
[…] By Stephen Pepper – December 16, 2020 48 Update 1/16/21: IHG is now extending certificates that were originally set to expire in 2021 to December 31, 2021. This does not apply to those that have been extended to 2021 already but rather if you had a certificate issued early last year that was scheduled to expire during the year this year, it is now going to be extended to 12/31/21 (note that if your certificate was issued in March 2020 or later, it should already have an 18-month expiration). The certificate in your account should reflect the newly-extended expiration date by 2/15/21. H/T: Traveling for Miles […]