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Is IHG sending me to London for ‘The Big Win’?

IHG Rewards Club has a four month promotion called The Big Win to finish off 2013 with customized offers for members registering and staying from September 1 though December 31.

Members are supposedly guaranteed an offer for at least a potential 50,000 bonus points after achieving set IHG hotel stay tasks.

You can register and see your own offer on IHG.

My offer is for a possible 89,800 points.

This offer is 34% achievable for me with only three paid nights for 30,600 bonus points.

This is a good value promotion bonus that will fill my IHG Rewards Club account with 30,600 bonus points and likely another 10,000 points from three paid nights that I can redeem for six to eight PointBreaks free nights at hotels.

My Customized Offer for IHG Rewards Club ‘The Big Win’

  • Try One and Done = 1,000 points. Stay one time and earn 1,000 bonus points.
  • Stay 6 nights and earn 7,000 points.
  • Stay in 3 different brands and earn 22,000 points.
  • Book 3 stays through IHG online or mobile and earn 2,800 points.
  • Stay 2 Saturday nights and earn 4,800 points.
  • ‘Get Out There’ and stay at two different specific hotels and earn 7,200 points. This is probably unachievable for me since all the hotels are in Europe.
  • Win Big. 45,000 points for completing all these tasks. This is probably unachievable for me since I do not plan to be in Europe during the promotion.

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Potential for 89,800 bonus points in my IHG Big Win offer.

Will IHG Rewards Club sending me to London?

I originally titled this piece ‘an IHG glass half empty’.

Then I reconsidered the offers and in reality this IHG Big Win offer is more appropriately ‘a glass nearly half full’ since I have a reasonable expectation of earning 30,000 bonus points through these offers with just three paid nights. That is a nice hotel stay incentive.

Three 1-night stays booked online for three separate IHG brands with two of these stays on a Saturday night earns 30,600 points. That is 34% of my potential offer for bonus points.

IHG brands are Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites, Candlewood Suites, InterContinental Hotels, Hotel Indigo and Crowne Plaza.

I could bump my bonus points offer up to 37,600 points with a total of six nights stayed during the promotion and earn nearly 42% of The Big Win bonus points. An additional 3 paid nights for 7,000 bonus points is not incentive unless I am going for the whole 89,800 bonus points deal with a trip to Europe.

Get Out There incentive may be an ocean too far. Or maybe not.

What initially made this offer a mostly empty glass for me is reading the ‘Get Out There’ task of staying in two specific hotels. All my choices are in Europe and I do not currently have any plans to be in Europe during the promotion.

  • Paris (19 IHG hotels)
  • Berlin (12 IHG hotels)
  • Dusseldorf (5 IHG hotels)
  • Frankfurt (6 IHG hotels)
  • Munich (5 IHG hotels)
  • Amsterdam (8 IHG hotels)
  • Moscow (7 IHG hotels)
  • Madrid (14 IHG hotels)
  • Birmingham (13 IHG hotels)
  • London (53 IHG hotels)
  • Rome (8 IHG hotels)

67,000 additional bonus points with a trip to one of these cities is my offer.

Buying IHG Rewards Club points by Monday, August 26 allows me to purchase 67,000 points at the rate of $5.75 per 1,000 points.

For $391 I can buy 68,000 points.

So I look at IHG’s The Big Win offer as a $391 rebate on the price of a ticket to Europe if I fly to one of my targeted cities and stay at two of the designated IHG hotels to earn the additional 67,000 bonus points. Though this would also require staying six nights total during the promotion to earn the 45,000 bonus points for completing all the tasks.

That is an incentive, but not necessarily enough to get me to Europe this fall.

30,600 bonus points with only three paid nights is where I know I can win big with this IHG promotion.

Why are my ‘Get Out There’ hotels all in Europe when I live in California?

Thinking back this year the only revenue stay I have had with IHG was last September in Barcelona. My other 20 or so nights with IHG this past year were all reward nights using PointBreaks and Cash & Points.

So realistically I look at The Big Win as 10,000 bonus points per night for each of the three nights I will stay with IHG over the next four months. That is totally achievable and I expect I can pick up those three hotel stays for under $100 per night all-in as my total expenditure.

That will be a $175 rebate on three paid nights considering the cost to buy points. And I will likely pick up another 10,000 or so bonus points by signing up for a variety of other offers. IHG Rewards Club still seems to allow stackable bonus points offers with all the targeted deals posted.

FlyerTalk has a thread showing how to sign up for additional IHG bonus points offers.

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IHG The Big Win

Now I better check what IHG put in the bonus points store for my wife’s account.

 

Ric Garrido, writer and owner of Loyalty Traveler, shares news and views on hotels, hotel loyalty programs and vacation destinations for frequent guests.

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10 Comments

  • Hilde August 25, 2013

    I have reservation for 4 nights in Berlin in 3 weeks. Do I have to cancel and rebook to get the bonus points offered?
    I just noticed that a hotel I booked for next march stay is on the point break list. I “paid” 15,000 points vs. 5,000 points for price break. However, they show NO Avail. for the night I need when I searched for the price point reservation. Do you have any luck appealing to have the point break “price” honored for an existing more expensive reservation?

  • Ric Garrido August 25, 2013

    @Hilde – The promotion T&C do not mention anything about when your hotel stays are booked. It is unlikely you need to rebook to qualify for the offer. That is an issue you might want to call and ask IHG. I’ll post here if I learn differently, but I assume existing reservations count for these bonus offers.

    You might want to rebook if you can benefit from online or mobile booking bonus. But only if rates have not increased.

    PointBreaks hotels on the list are only available for stays through October 31. You can’t get the 5,000 point rate for stays after October 31, 2013.

    Watch to see if the hotel appears again on PointBreaks during your stay dates.

    Since new PointBreaks hotels are posted about every two months the list for March 2014 will probably not be posted until around the end of January or February 2014.

  • MJM August 25, 2013

    Do the T&Cs for Get Out There allow two hotels in one city? The T&Cs for my cities look like I have to stay in two of the cities, not two hotels in one city. Too bad you did not get my cities, which include LA and SF.

  • Mark August 25, 2013

    Is there a special link for the double purchase points? When I log into points.com and provide my IHG platinum number, it shows the regular price and no bonus.

  • gg August 25, 2013

    That’s not bad. My friend got 82 nights, 15 saturday stays and $2500 dining requirement, for a whooping 10K points…

  • Al August 25, 2013

    I suppose those offers are stackable? I receive the following offers:

    (1) 1 stay – 1000 points
    (2) 8 nights – 11500 points
    (3) 3 different brands – 21000 points
    (4) select any 2 of 5 properties – 18000 points
    (5) 2 saturdays – 7200
    (6) win big – 59000
    Total 117000

    If they are stackable, I could finish all of them with 8 nights/3 stays. Am I interpreting this promotion correctly? Or everything is reset after each offer is completed.

  • al613 August 25, 2013

    my nights have to be in australia and japan. i booked nights there with points from my account for a friend, but have never been there yet myself!

  • Ric Garrido August 25, 2013

    The tasks are stackable.

    I have to complete two Saturday nights and three brands.

    Stay 1 – Holiday Inn on Saturday night.

    Stay 2 – Holiday Inn Express Saturday night.

    Stay 3 – Crowne Plaza – Friday night

    I earn 1,000 bonus points on Stay 1. Stay one and done task #1.

    I earn 4,800 bonus points on Stay 2 after second Saturday night.

    I earn 2,800 bonus points after Stay 3 for all three reservations booked online.

    I earn 22,000 points after Stay 3 for staying in third Ihg brand.

    I earn 30,600 points for three nights on three hotel stays for as low as $225.

    And I earn about 2,000 points for stays.

    And i likely can pick up another 5,000 to 10,000 from other stackable offers like those found on FlyerTalk or check LoyaltyLobby.com where John often tracks multiple IHG offers members can sign up for to earn bonus IHG points.

  • Nic August 25, 2013

    Well better Europe than Australia and Japan.

  • Hilde August 26, 2013

    thank you

Comments are closed.

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