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I do talk a lot about flights and flight classes on this website, but I’m also an equal opportunist when it comes to an Executive Room upgrade, 100% bonus points, or free nights away. I mean who isn’t? Right now purchase 7,000 or more IHG Points in a single transaction and IHG will double them! So 7,000 points becomes 14,000 points; 50,000 points become 100,0000 points and 100,000 points becomes 200,000!
Current example prices as of right now for 7,000 points is US$94 right the way up to 100,000 points for US$1,000 (all IHG points are purchased in USD, you’re unable to buy them in GBP which is a bit frustrating for us customers this side of the pond).
Are Bonus Points Worth It?
Generally Yes. But you need to check. The deal has to be right for you and your intended stay. Personally, I wouldn’t and haven’t yet rushed out to purchase 100,000 points for US$1,000 to put aside 200,000 points for a rainy day.
If you have a particular need for a hotel in the future it is worth pricing up point purchases to see if this makes sense to you and works out cheaper than a straight cash price. The IHG point calculating algorithm means sometimes it will be a bargain and other times it doesn’t work out much cheaper than a cash price.
For example, I was looking at two possible hotel stays:
Stay One:
One IHG group hotel was in London and had a cash price of £250 for the night I wanted to stay. The Points and Cash price was 25,000 points and £80 cash – and the Points Only price was 45,000.
Let’s at this stage pretend I have no IHG points but looked to take advantage of the 100% bonus.
- For Points and Cash, I would need to purchase 13,000 points, so with the 100% bonus, it doubles to 26,000 points. This would cost £116.68 to purchase the points. Add this to the £80 cash and the total price is £196.68 – which saves £53.32 off the cash price. Not bad;
- For Points Only I would need to purchase 23,000 points, so with the 100% bonus, it doubles to 46,000 points. This would cost £205.58 – which saves £44.42. A good saving but not as good as the Points and Cash saving;
Stay Two
The second IHG group hotel was on the outskirts of London and had a cash price of £150 for the night I wanted to stay. The Points and Cash price was 5,000 points and £25 cash – the Points Only price was 10,000.
For Points and Cash although I wouldn’t need 7,000 points I don’t receive double points for purchasing anything less. For just a standard 5,000 points though it would cost £52.04. This means that purchasing standard points (even without the double point bonus on offer) would work out to £73.96 cheaper than paying the cash price!
Purchase 7,000 points, which doubles to 14,000 points, costs £73.50. This means you could spend just £98.50 (which saves £51.50) and still have 9,000 points to spare. Although I would recommend going for the Points Only option below;
For Points Only we’ve seen in the example above this would cost just £73.50 (saving a massive £76.50 off the cash price!) and would still mean you have 4,000 points remaining to spend!
Find out more about the IHG Bonus Offer by visiting www.ihg.com, logging into your account, and following the Buy Points option. Here you will see the details of the 100% bonus offer – but it’s for a limited time only!