IHG’s loyalty program has long been uncompetitive with the big names in US hotel loyalty, Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott.
Today they announced IHG One Rewards, with sweeping changes from the previous IHG Rewards program.
There are now 5 elite tiers, which can be reached based on paid and award nights, points from stays, or from credit cards. IHG will look back to 1/1/22 to award tier status. Unfortunately, credit card spending and transfer from Chase no longer earn elite qualifying points in the program as they used to previously. You also can’t earn elite qualifying nights from credit card spending.
If you have an IHG Traveler Card you will get Silver status and can earn Gold status if you spend $20K plus one additional purchase in a calendar year. You can read more about that card here.
If you have an IHG Premier Card or IHG Premier Business Card you will get Platinum status and can earn Diamond status if you spend $40K plus one additional purchase in a calendar year. You can read more about those cards here.
It’s worth noting that the United Club Infinite Card also offers IHG Platinum status. You can read more about that card here. IHG Select cardholders will also receive Platinum status, while IHG Classic cardholders will get Silver status.
If you have an IHG Premier Card or IHG Premier Business Card that means you’ll earn 26 points per dollar at IHG hotels, which consists of 10 points per dollar on the card, 10 points per dollar from IHG for the stay, and 6 bonus points per dollar from IHG for being a Platinum elite member. If you earn Diamond status that climbs to 30 points per dollar.
I value IHG points around 0.45 cents each, so earning 26 points per dollar is a total rebate of about 11.7%.
Below are the new benefits for each level, though these benefits won’t kick in until early June.
New benefits include things like early check-in (upon availability) and Rewards Night discounts for Platinum/Diamond, such as the recent promo for 20% off stays up to 3 nights, a Diamond phone line, and the ability for Diamond members to choose a full hot breakfast instead of a points or drink amenity.
All members will get 2pm late checkout upon availability, which is not competitive with offerings from Hilton, Hyatt, and Marriott that offer 4pm guaranteed late checkout at non-resorts for upper tier elites. Higher tier elites will have higher priority, but there are no guarantees here.
IHG is saying that Platinum and Diamonds have always been eligible for upgrades to suites based on availability, but they will try to better communicate that benefit to hotels in an effort to provide more suite upgrades. Unfortunately, suite upgrades are still not guaranteed even if base suites are available as hotels are not required to offer them.
Notably missing from the IHG program is the ability to transfer points to other members, which other brands allow.
IHG also doesn’t waive resort fees on award stays like Hilton and Hyatt do and they don’t offer lounge access to elites unless they qualify for it with Milestone Rewards as described below.
IHG also doesn’t offer a path to lifetime status as the other brands so.
IHG is taking a page out of Hyatt’s playbook with Milestone Rewards after every 10 nights, starting with 20 nights in a calendar year.
Benefits you can select include food and beverage awards worth $20 each and annual lounge membership which allows you and a guest into hotel lounges where available through the end of the following calendar year.
IHG will also offer confirmed suite upgrades which work for an upgrade to a base suite or premium room on stays up to 5 nights long. You can call IHG to apply the suite upgrade up to 14 days before your stay and if a base suite is available for sale, it will be yours. In the future, IHG says that this process will be brought online. Unfortunately suite upgrades can only be applied to paid nights, not award nights. Hyatt and Marriott suite upgrades apply to both paid and points stays, though only Hyatt offers suite upgrades confirmable at the time of booking, while Marriott doesn’t let you know until within 5 days of the stay. However I like that IHG will allow you to use the suite upgrade for a premium room, something I wish Hyatt offered as well as Hyatt hotels are often sold out of base suites, which means you can’t use a suite upgrade for that stay.
The real problem with the IHG Milestone Rewards is that you don’t earn any nights from spending money on or having IHG credit cards. While the Chase World Of Hyatt Consumer Card comes with 5 night credits per years and earns 2 night credits for every $5,000 spent and the Chase World Of Hyatt Business Card earns 5 night credits for every $10,000 spent, IHG cards don’t earn any night credits. You’ll have to stay on paid or award nights to earn there rewards even if you have Platinum or Diamond status from an IHG card.
Marriott also has choice rewards at 50 and 75 nights, but just having a Marriott consumer and business card puts you at 30 night credits for the year. Plus you can earn 1 elite night credit for every $5,000 spent.
That makes IHG Milestone Rewards good for those spending nights in IHG hotels, but not competitive with credit card benefits offered by other hotel chains. And while IHG offers rollover elite tier nights, those don’t count for Milestone Rewards.
You must select your Milestone Rewards within 90 days of earning them. Once selected, the food and beverage or suite upgrades are valid for 12 months.
Milestone Rewards are non-transferrable.
These will launch in early June, with a lookback period to 1/1/22:
IHG says that it will continue offering the Kimpton Inner Circle and IHG Ambassador/Royal Ambassador programs, though benefits can’t be stacked with Milestone Rewards.
Overall these are some nice benefits and changes, but I don’t think this quite makes IHG competitive with Hilton, Hyatt, or Marriott.
Hyatt offers a credit card path to earn top-tier status with more concrete benefits like confirmed suite upgrades even on points stays at the time of booking, confirmed 4pm late-checkout, a dedicated concierge, waived resort fees, waived parking fees on award stays, guest of honor bookings, hot breakfast, and lounge access even without milestone rewards. Hyatt also still offers award charts, which IHG, Hilton, and Marriott have all jettisoned.
Marriott also offers a credit card path to earn upper tier elite status and choice benefits like suite upgrades, and offers confirmed 4pm late-checkout, guaranteed base suite upgrades when available at checkin, and lounge access even without milestone rewards.
Hilton’s top-tier Diamond benefits can all be had by opening an AMEX Aspire card and the program offers waived resort fees on award stays and lounge access even without milestone rewards.
IHG isn’t there yet, but these are certainly steps in the right direction and they promise future improvements. For people who were staying at IHG already, this is almost all good news. But I don’t think they’re going to draw away many defectors from other hotels chains with this set of benefits.
IHG needs to firm up the “upon availability” benefits, allow their credit cards to earn elite qualifying nights, and fully integrate Six Senses and other aspirational hotels into the program to become a top-tier hotel loyalty program.
What do you think of the IHG One Rewards programs? Will it be enough to change where you stay and earn hotel status?
What I want from a hotel rewards program is free nights for family trips – at decent hotels that offer kosher breakfast food for my kids. I don’t care about upgrades/lounges/breakfast/drinks. IHG has been amazing for me.
I am diamond elite, I have the premier card (I’m switching to the business card just to get the new card bonus – but they are essentially identical) and stay +/- 75 nights a year at IHG hotels.
Between earned points and bonus offers, I end up with +/- 30 free nights a year, so even through we need two rooms per night to fit the whole family, we stay 15 nights a year as a family and never pay for hotels.
I think a lot of it comes down to what you’re trying to do with your points. If your goal is to enjoy as many amenities as possible at more luxurious destinations, then yes, the other programs hold more value for you. But if you are looking to take many comfortable family vacations with decent amenities where the main attraction is the destination rather than the hotel, you will probably get far more value for your credit card bonus with IHG than with anyone else. If used in this way, you can easily get 8-9 free nights with a 140k premier sign up utilizing 4th night free if your fine with Holiday Inn/Candlewood/Staybridge.
In fact, we stayed late Feb-early March of this year at the Holiday Inn Express in Williams AZ (under an hour to the Grand Canyon) for 12,500 pts. At this valuation, it would come to 16 free night utilizing 4th night free, or 12 night without. That’s simply not possible with any other program.
We’ve almost always gotten upgraded to a suite with platinum status upon request. I usually call ahead on the day of the reservation and explain that we’ll be coming with a baby and could really use the space.
@Dan,
Did your Hyatt given AA EXP status expire, or were you given another year extension? I’m going on three years now… 🙂
I took advantage of this offer to extend again:
https://www.dansdeals.com/points-travel/elite-status/american-throws-towel-will-make-much-easier-renew-elite-status/
Good but not good enough.
End of the day everyone is beholden to Marriotts portfolio no matter how low they go.
As for buying all you can get your hands on that is a silly argument. Their value is situational. You cannot buy groceries with them. But yes I always make sure I have points at .5 cpp for the foreseeable future.
Free 4th night as opposed to free 5th night also adds significant value to the points. The 10 percent back on redemptions when coupled with a cc further adds value. I have redeemed 2 million ihg points never on aspirational stays. On every 4 night redemption I never got less than 1cpp after the 10 percent rebate.
That requires having an IHG card and another IHG card which is no longer offered…
There is no way ihg points are worth only .45 cents. When you factor in the tax saved on points redemption I have NEVER gotten less than .8 . “Value” is determined by what you can get for something. Not by the “average” available redemption. Yes you can pretty much buy endless points for .5 and redeem them for .8
No, value is determined by what you would part with your cash to get it. I have redeemed miles for 50 cents, but that doesn’t mean their value is 50 cents, it means I got an outsized value redemption.
The value of something can’t be more than it costs to buy it. IHG sells the points for 0.5 cents each, therefore that is the maximum value you can argue for. Otherwise you should buy all the IHG points you can get your hands on. As I’m not trading all my cash for for IHG points, that means it’s value has to be slightly less than 0.5 cents each.
If I can buy a Euro for $1.09, you can’t convince me that it’s value is $2 based on what you bought with it.
@Dan Couldn’t agree more
You are comparing apples to oranges. So will you tell me that all the times you announce opportunity to buy hilton points to get overwater villas in Maldives or Waldorf jerusalem nights for cheap then the points are still worth less than what you pay for them? A euro is intrinsic cash. Points are not. Just last week you lamented that the VALUE of bonvoy points were diminished bec of lack of 4 cpp on aspirational redemptions. You have hundreds of times prided yourself at how much VALUE you got out of your points regardless of the fact that you perhaps would not have paid the cash price. I am talking getting nearly 1cpp on redemptions I WOULD pay cash for if I didn’t have points. That absolutely makes their value higher. Consider your mint shtick. Isn’t what you purchased more valuable than what you pay for it ? You contradict yourself here…
When I say value, I’m referring to the average redemption value and the price point where it can make sense to buy the points without a redemption in mind.
If you want to say value is the optimal redemption that’s certainly your prerogative. But that’s just semantics.
No its not. If you buy pistachios in India for 1 usd per kilo with intention to sell them in usa for 20 usd per kilo then there value is greater than 1 usd. Similarly anyone who is buying points does so with intention to “sell” them (to various hotel programs) at a higher rate. The hotels feel same way. They sell at .5 knowing that wherever you use them that THEY won’t be reimbursing the hotel that much. This doesn’t justify buying endless points anymore than it does buying endless pistachio. The market is set based on your intended foreseeable consumption (and devaluation is always a risk in long term strategy). It’s literally FOOLISH to use IHG points at .45 cents since it is EASY to get .8 to 1 cpp. It doesn’t make sense to buy “unlimited ihg points at .45 or even .4 without redemptions in mind. (Your claim to me to buy unlimited points with all my money etc)… you keep shifting the goal posts.
do reward stays count toward earning ilestone awards or just paid stays ?Ty
They do.