IHG Rewards Club sale to May 1, $5.56 per 1,000 points. Why I don’t buy IHG points.

IHG Rewards Club has the most lucrative promotions for earning points of any hotel loyalty program. Until May 1, 2019 you can buy 100,800 points for $560 with the current buy IHG points with 80% bonus points offer when you spend at least $300 to buy 54,000 points.

The reason I don’t buy IHG points is IHG Rewards Club promotions in the past six months have allowed me to earn more than 104,000 points on $546 in spend for 6 hotel nights I actually needed while traveling.

I made a road trip from Monterey to Disneyland in Anaheim, California over Thanksgiving 2018 and earned 44,000 points for 3 hotel nights spending $255.

Loyalty Traveler - Thanksgiving road trip earned 44,000 IHG points for $255 (Nov 26, 2018).

Last month I earned 60,000 points on 3 hotel nights for $291 in spend, including one night at InterContinental Warsaw.

Loyalty Traveler - IHG Free Nights Faster – $291 earned 60,000 points with 3 nights in Warsaw (March 9, 2019).

I could spend $560 to buy 100,800 points.  Or simply play IHG Rewards Club promotions and pay $546 to stay 6 hotel nights in places where I need a room while traveling and earn 104,000 points.

This is not just the past six months that I pulled in a large chunk of IHG Rewards Club points. I have averaged a hundred thousand points and many free nights through IHG Rewards Club promotions each year for the past five years on relatively low spend.

The fact that members get different targeted tasks in most IHG promotions of the last few years means you might not be able to earn the number of points I earned on as few nights. Or you might have even easier and cheaper to earn bonus points tasks for your IHG stays.

Bottom line is I rarely find myself short of IHG Rewards Club points. I find myself regularly earning about 100,000 points per year on $500 to $600 in hotel spend.

I think the secret with IHG Rewards Club is stay just enough to maximize promotions, but not stay so frequently at IHG hotels that your promotional offers require a lot of nights to earn your targeted task bonus points. If you don’t have any paid IHG stays, then you will probably not get good promotion offers. For me, staying the minimum nights required to earn maximum points in IHG promotions each year seems to bring repeated reasonable offers I can achieve each season to earn more points.

I just need a nice PointBreaks offer I can use to redeem a good chunk of my IHG points balance. My points have been building since summer 2017 when I last redeemed a bunch for IHG PointBreaks nights. I keep redeeming points each PointBreaks hotels posting, but I have canceled all of them when my travel plans did not work out to take advantage of the deals. Most recently that cancellation of a PointBreaks night was Hotel Indigo Warsaw for 15,000 points on February 28, the last date available at 15K. I ended up staying at Holiday Inn Warsaw instead to earn the 60,000 points from the latest Free Nights Faster promotion.

Your travel needs may provide an incentive for you to buy IHG Rewards Club points with this promotional rate. This is one of the better IHG points purchase rates we’ll likely see during the year. There are occasional opportunities to buy points for less, like $5.00 to $5.20 per 1,000 points. No need to rush on this 80% bonus points offer unless you have a specific plan for IHG points.

Loyalty Traveler - IHG Points&Cash 15% discount reduces buy points to $4.85 per 1,000 (Sep 13, 2018).