IHG Rewards Club – the loyalty program for Intercontinental, Crowne Plaza, Holiday Inn and related brands — is offering a 100% bonus on purchased points through today June 30.
This means you can buy points at $0.00575 apiece.
This is the normal pricing:
You may purchase points in 1,000 increments:
1,000 – 10,000 points for $13.50 per 1,000 points
11,000 – 25,000 points for $12.50 per 1,000 points
26,000 – 60,000 points for $11.50 per 1,000 points
As a result, you can buy points for as little as $0.00575 apiece (half of $11.50 per 1000) or $690 for 120,000 points which is the maximum allowable purchase.
The points are processed by Points.com so this doesn’t count as hotel spend for credit card bonuses.
- Using points at the Intercontinental Thalasso on Bora Bora may be the best aspirational points redemption in the world. (Although availability can be tough – best strategy is to book the last day of the hotel’s booking window, and keep adding a day as a day passes.)
- And for sure if you’re spending your points on discounted 5000 point per night PointBreaks hotels you’re getting real leverage.
In general I value an IHG Rewards Club point at about 6/10ths of a cent — just over the price they’re selling points through this promotion. If the price were lower I would be a buyer. Personally I’d rather hold cash than points at this price and only buy points with a specific use in mind, especially since it’s long been possible to buy points at 7/10ths of a cent apiece whenever one wishes. The gain by acting right away is marginal (just over one-tenth of a cent per point).
But you likely won’t get hurt at this price. And it’s the lowest price I’ve seen, though something they’ve offered before (such as last fall).
