IHG 20% Off Awards
There is a new IHG 20% off awards promo that launched yesterday. It may have flown under the radar a bit with World of Hyatt's exciting new promotions going out. This promotion to kick of 2023 from IHG seems to be targeted to credit cardholders only. I received an email about it yesterday with the subject: Hey Mark, enjoy 20% off Reward Nights through 3/10.
Update 1/19/23: Reminder to book some speculative bookings from this sneaky good offer that ends tomorrow. It is also a great way to maximize your free night certs. Reminder that this is available to IHG cardholders and Platinum / Diamond elite members.
IHG Promotion 2023 Details
Here are the details for the new promo:
- Enjoy a 20% discount on Reward Nights when you book 3 or fewer consecutive Reward Nights by January 20 and stay by March 10, 2023
- If using Points & Cash, the 20% discount will be applied to the cash portion of each available option.
- Only those Reward Nights booked by 1/20/2023 for stays during the period from 1/9/2023 through 3/10/2023 qualify for the Offer.
- The 20% discount is offered at time of booking as identified on the participating hotel’s booking page.
- The Offer is not available to use along with the “Fourth Reward Night Free” cardmember benefit when booking a stay of four (4) or more consecutive Reward Nights.
It stinks that they are limiting it to 3 nights so that you miss out on pairing it up with the 4th night free perk of the IHG Rewards Premier card. If you are staying 4 nights you will likely get a better deal by just going with the 4th night free perk versus booking a 3 night stay for the 20% discount and then a separate a 1 night stay. It looks like this should stack with the 10% back on award stays perk of the old IHG Rewards Club card (no longer available). At least I can't find anything in the terms about it. That perk comes with a cap of 100,000 points back each year.
Points & Cash Bookings Are Interesting
The picture above is what it looks like in the wild. I love that the discount is done automatically at the time of booking. Plus, since we have the O.G. IHG card we would / should get another 2,320 points back after the stay, bringing the net discount to 28% off the original price. That is pretty tough to beat!
What I find really interesting, though, is the cash price is dropping with the 20% reduction in points. I am guessing that is because the system has the two tied together somehow. One would think the cash rate would stay the same since the deal is on the points side of things but they are too intertwined it appears.
Look at the first option above. It was originally 24,000 points and $38 for the 29,000 point booking. This was essentially buying 5,000 points at $0.0076 each. After the 20% off the same booking became 18,200 points and $30 for the now 23,200 point booking. The purchase of points remained the same amount, 5,000 points, but the cost went from $38 to $30 for those same points. That is only a cost of $0.006 per point, or what I value IHG points at. That makes these points and cash bookings pretty dang good now, especially if you have a smaller balance of points.
It gets even cheaper the more points you have to buy. In the 8,200 points and $88 example above you are buying the 15,000 points needed for $0.00586 each, which is below their street value. That rate gets even better if you have the IHG card that nets you 10% of those points back too.
IHG 20% Off Awards: ToP Thoughts
Initially I wasn't too excited about this deal since we didn't have a large stash of IHG points. After digging into the IHG 20% off awards promotion though, I am now very intrigued by this promotion. It offers really good value even on points and cash bookings because of the reduced cash and award rates. That should allow me to maximize our small balances and use up some of these orphaned / stranded IHG points.
Let me know your thoughts on the promotion over in the ToP Facebook Group.
