Rewards Canada contributor Bill Wheatley provides details on how he completed the last IHG systemwide promotion Free Nights Faster. This is a great example of how bonus points offers an be really lucrative, especially if you are a road warrior across the Canadian prairies like Bill is! Now you can use this example to gear up this summer’s Accelerate promotion, that is if you are targetted for it!
Well, another successful IHG Accelerate promotion concluded on April 30th, 2019. You may remember from a previous post my offer was quite lucrative this time round, a total of 134,400 points were available.
I am happy to report that I was able to achieve all requirements and did in fact receive all offered bonus points. My requirements are listed below.
These obligations were completed with only 8 stays (12 nights). My total points earned during this period were 172,442.
In order to help understand the value of these promotions, I will break it down into cost per points. As IHG allocates points based on USD spent, I will use USD values.
My total spend was USD $1,287.03 (CAD $1,914.72). The points earned without bonus was 38,042. This equates to 19.86 points per penny. The value of the bonus points of 134,400 is 104.42 points per penny. The combined total is 133.98 points per penny spent. That is a huge valuation for any rewards program to be earning at a cost per point ratio of this magnitude.
One interesting thing to note is that this promotion required staying at 4 different brands in order to accomplish one of the tasks. Towards that end I stayed at both a Candlewood Suites and a Staybridge Suites brand. While both hotels are very good and quite comfortable, from a points earning point of view, they are not as lucrative. While most Holiday Inn branded properties offer 10 points per USD spend, both Candlewood and Staybridge only offer 5 points per USD spend. Something to consider when booking your stays….
Editor’s addition:
And now Bill is onto the latest IHG Rewards Club Promotion which is the return of Accelerate for 2019, here is what he received:
And here is what Jeff W, another Rewards Canada contributor received:
And here is what I got:
Yes, a big fat zero for me despite having my first IHG stay in nearly two years during the last promotional period. IHG has decided that I would not get in on Accelerate, guess I’m not loyal enough. I even called IHG to see if this was a glitch and it was not. This of course happened when I just completed another IHG stay this past weekend. Seeing the above offers and/or the lack of one, it really looks like IHG is tightening the purse strings with this version of Accelerate!
Here is the latest promotion detail:
Earn 500 to 40,000 or more Bonus IHG Rewards Club Points when you
complete stays at IHG Hotels Worldwide. Bonus varies by member. Full details, online registration and booking (Registration is required) Register by Jun 19 for stays May 1 – Aug 31, 19