On April 15, 2014 there will be a 5,000 points reduction in the cost of reward nights at more than 100 hotels in the IHG Rewards Club program. The word from IHG Corporate Communications is there will be no hotels rising in reward cost with the changes coming next week. Some good news is welcome after the American Airlines announcement yesterday eliminating North America gateway stopovers and OneWorld distance-based rewards.
Sample hotels dropping reward category April 15, 2014.
- InterContinental Hotel Shanghai-Puxi, China – 35,000 to 30,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Crowne Plaza Geneva, Switzerland – 35,000 to 30,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Hotel Indigo Fort Myers Downtown River District, Florida, U.S. – 30,000 to 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Holiday Inn Resort PhuketMai Khao Beach Resort, Phuket, Thailand – 20,000 to 15,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Holiday Inn Ciudad De Mexico- Trade Center, Mexico – 15,000 to 10,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Holiday Inn Express Frankfurt-Messe, Germany – 25,000 to 20,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
- Staybridge Suites – San Antonio-Stone Oak, Texas, U.S. – 20,000 to 15,000 IHG Rewards Club points .
- Candlewood Suites Virginia Beach-Norfolk, Virginia, U.S. – 25,000 to 20,000 IHG Rewards Club points.
The hotels listed here were provided in the IHG corporate email I received. There was no word if there will be a complete published list of the 100+ hotels changing category on April 15. That would certainly help IHG Rewards Club members, however, IHG Rewards Club, like Best Western Rewards does not publish lists of hotels in each reward category on their websites. In fact, I noticed today that I could not access the reward chart without member login.
IHG Rewards Club restructured their hotel loyalty program reward nights last year when the hotels were changed from brand level reward rates to a category tiered system with 9 reward categories from 10,000 points to 50,000 points per night. And essentially there are ten reward levels since PointBreaks drop the rate to 5,000 points per night at about 75 to 175 hotels each promotion period for this reward level.
70% of more than 4,500 IHG hotels worldwide are at 20,000 points or less.
