IHG CyberWeek sale from Nov 29-Dec 6 offers 30% off room rates worldwide, while also offering known bonus points promotions for stays in December and January. There are some very good discount deals with this offer with good value points rebates possible through other IHG Rewards Club promotions.
IHG Rewards Club Accelerate through December 31 was a relatively weak fall 2019 promotion for many members like me when it came out in late August. I could only earn about 14,400 points by completing three offers requiring a minimum 7 hotel nights from Sep 1-Dec 31. Given that 14,400 points are only worth about $70, I took advantage of an offer with Le Club Accorhotels in late September to earn 160 EUR in points by booking six advance purchase nonrefundable room nights for $600.
Then in October, IHG released a 4x points concurrent promotion to Accelerate offering up to 40 points/$1 for stays through January 31. Promotion value dynamics swung the pendulum back in favor of IHG Rewards Club. Too late for me to impact my hotel spend choices, I have my travel hotels already booked for December and January — but you may have better opportunities to cash in with IHG stays and cash out with some free IHG reward nights.
Loyalty Traveler – IHG Rewards Club 4x points to Jan 31, book by Dec 15
If I could change my December-January hotel plans and shift $600 in hotel spend to IHG on 4 hotel stays for 6 nights, then I could realize comparable value to 160 EUR from Le Club Accorhotels 8,000 points.
Stay 1: Holiday Inn Express Amsterdam South $68.64 / $73.45 = 686 base points + 1,000 bonus points = 1,686 points (+ elite bonus points)
Stay 2: Holiday Inn Express Amsterdam Arena Towers $76.03 / $81.35 after tax = 760 base points + 1,520 bonus points (2x bonus points) = 2,280 points.
Stay 3: Holiday Inn Express Amsterdam South $73.27 / $78.41 = 733 base points + 2,199 bonus points (3x bonus points)= 2,932 points.
Stay 4: Holiday Inn Krakow $301.56 (3-night stay) = 3,015 base points + 9,045 bonus points = 12,060 points.
18,958 points from 4x promotion + about 6,500 bonus points from my Accelerate tasks and Platinum elite bonus points = 25,000+ IHG points for about $550.
All-in-all, I could have earned about 25,000 bonus IHG points for 6 hotel nights in Amsterdam and Krakow for about the same amount of spend that I put into Le Club Accorhotels in September. In fact, room rates for these same four hotels with the current IHG Cybersale are comparable to low room rates I found at these hotels in September and October during other IHG sales. Holiday Inn Express Amsterdam City Hall is one hotel I almost booked in September for $110 per night and that hotel increased about 30% in price to $145 per night with the current sale. The rise in room rates for HIX Amsterdam City Hall is primarily a matter of location. One of the main reasons I went with Le Club Accorhotels in Amsterdam was for better hotel locations in central Amsterdam rather than staying at the cheaper IHG hotels in Amsterdam South.
Bottom line in using this analysis of my own planned hotel stays for Amsterdam and Krakow, the IHG 30% off CyberSale combined with the potential for 4x points means there are proven opportunities to earn a high value rebate on relatively low spend for hotel stays through January 31, 2020. The combination of these IHG CyberSale room rates with IHG Rewards Club 4x points could have resulted in about 25,000 IHG points for about the same price I spent in September in my hotel stay plan to earn 8,000 Le Club Accorhotel points worth 160 EUR.
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