IHG One Rewards Program and Points Guide [Fully Updated 2022.12]

Introduction to IHG Hotels

InterContinental Hotels Group plc (IHG) is headquartered in Denham, England. As of January 2010, IHG was the world’s largest multinational hotel company by number of rooms, and also one of the world’s ten most recognized brands. IHG directly owns, manages, leases, or franchises more than 4,500 hotels with over 650,000 rooms across about 100 countries and regions.

• Luxury / Upper Upscale: InterContinental Hotels (InterContinental, IC), Crowne Plaza, Hotel Indigo
• Upper Midscale / Upscale: Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Staybridge Suites
• Midscale: Candlewood Suites, Even Hotels

The flagship InterContinental properties are generally quite nice.

IHG Elite Status Overview

Status Tiers and Basic Benefits

IHG currently has five membership tiers. The entry level is Club, which you get just by signing up, and the top tier is Diamond. To move up, you need either qualifying nights or qualifying points; meeting either requirement is enough.

• qualification night: earned through hotel stays (both paid stays and award stays count), prior-year rollover, or certain stay promotions
• qualification points: base points earned from hotel spending, plus promotional points and credit card spending points (transferred points do not count)

The basic benefits for each tier are shown below. In general, IHG does not offer especially strong benefits for elite members. Room upgrades are not guaranteed, and Diamond is probably the only tier that is meaningfully useful. Even breakfast, one of the more valuable perks, is only available as a Diamond choice benefit.

Milestone Rewards

Compared with elite benefits, Milestone Rewards are actually fairly useful. Milestones are based on the number of nights stayed, and rewards are issued directly.

• Starting at 20 nights, you can earn additional bonus points every 10 nights
• At 40 nights and 70 nights, reward choices include points, food & beverage vouchers, suite upgrade awards, and an annual lounge membership
• Suite upgrades and lounge access are both quite valuable, but they do require real stay volume, which is great for frequent business travelers

Ambassador Status

If you stay at IHG hotels often and want more premium benefits, you may want to consider IHG’s paid Ambassador membership. It can be purchased for $200 or 40,000 IHG points. If you plan to pay cash, you can also buy it at the front desk during a stay, and the hotel may give you a complimentary upgrade or some vouchers at the time of purchase.

You can renew within 60 days before your membership expires. Renewal also has two options, and paying cash is still the better deal.

• Redeem 40,000 points
• Pay $200 and receive 15,000 IHG points, plus a 10% rebate on award stays booked with points over the next year (up to 100,000 points back)

Ambassador benefits include complimentary Platinum status, a $20 credit per stay, room upgrade benefits, and a weekend night certificate (stay two nights on a weekend, get the second night free). If you can make good use of the weekend certificate, buying the membership can be a very good deal.

Fuel Benefits

Fuel Rewards now has a partnership with IHG, and IHG members at all tiers can receive extra discounts. Each fill-up can save at least 5-7 cents/gal. Even without any elite status, you can still do better than the standard 3 cents/gal. If you do not have an IHG account yet, go register for one. For a detailed analysis, see:

• More analysis of IHG member fuel discounts

Status Match and Challenges

IHG has previously run promotions such as a Platinum challenge, though those required registration through designated companies. More recently, there have also been stay-based offers such as:

• IHG status challenge: free Platinum status; keep Platinum with 5 nights, earn Diamond with 15 nights

How to Use IHG Points

Dynamic award pricing is now fully in effect in the U.S., Europe, and Asia-Pacific. In other words, the number of points needed for a hotel night is no longer fixed, but instead changes automatically based on the current cash rate and hotel tier. My impression is that IHG has taken the old hotel-category structure and layered dynamic point pricing on top of it based on room rates and peak dates. However, the swings are not especially large, so you generally do not see Hilton-style 100,000+ point nights. As a result, redemptions have actually become easier in some ways: what you see is what you get, and you no longer need to learn each hotel’s category. Another benefit is improved usefulness for free night certificates. For example, a 40,000-point free night certificate can often book some luxury hotels during off-peak periods, whereas under the old fixed-category system that would not have been possible. Here are two examples: InterContinental Times Square and InterContinental Barclay in New York were both previously CAT 13 properties at 70,000 points, but under dynamic pricing the required points actually dropped.

• For August 1-2, 2020, the cash price was about $225 and the award cost was 40,000 points. That is a pretty decent redemption value. 40,000 points used to be the old CAT 7 price.

• For December 25-26, 2020, which should count as the more expensive Christmas holiday period, the Times Square IC rose to 60,000 points with a cash price of $288, while the Barclay IC stayed at the same point price with a slightly higher cash rate. 60,000 points used to be the old CAT 11 price.

• For December 31, 2020-January 1, 2021, New Year’s Eve, the Times Square IC was no longer available, while the Barclay IC cost $513 cash and only slightly more in points at 47,500. That works out to an excellent redemption value of 1.08c/p. 47,500 points falls roughly between CAT 8 and CAT 9 under the old system.

Ways to Earn IHG Points

Earning Through Hotel Stays

Earning rates depend on both your elite status and how much you spend on hotel stays. You earn 10 IHG points per $1 spent as the base rate. Gold members get an extra 20% bonus, Platinum members get an extra 60%, and Diamond members get an extra 100%.

IHG Points Sales

You can buy IHG points through Points.com. Normally, without a promotion, 10,000 points cost $116, which is a very poor deal. However, IHG frequently runs promotions, sometimes with up to a 100% bonus, which brings the cost down to 0.5 cpp. If you have a good use for IHG points, especially if you have the IHG Premier card’s fourth-night-free benefit on award stays, then buying some points can make sense.

• IHG discounted points purchase link

IHG P+C point-buying trick

As mentioned above, buying IHG points directly without a promotion is usually not worth it. But there is a Points + Cash trick that lets you effectively buy points for about $70 per 10,000 points, which is roughly in line with TPG’s valuation. Used wisely, it can still be worthwhile.
A simple summary of the process:

• You first need at least 5,000 points in your IHG account as a seed balance (10,000 is even better)
• Search for a reward night at any hotel
• Find an option that uses POINTS+CASH (effectively $40 for 5,000 points or $70 for 10,000 points)
• Check out. At this point, you are effectively buying 5,000 or 10,000 points for $40 or $70. IHG will also indicate at CHECK-OUT that this points purchase is not refundable.
• Cancel the reservation you just made, and the points used for that booking will be redeposited into your account
• At that point, you have completed a purchase of 5,000/10,000 IHG points for $40/$70

Transfer from Chase UR (not recommended)

If you have CSP, INK PLUS, or INK BOLD, you can transfer your UR points to IHG. But since UR points are worth far more than IHG points, this is generally a terrible value and a huge waste. For more information on UR points, see this article on our site:

• Introduction to Chase Ultimate Rewards

Chase IHG co-branded credit cards

The annual-fee IHG card comes with a free night certificate every year, so it is generally easy to justify keeping long term.

• 1 free night certificate every year, worth keeping long term: This card gives you one annual free night at eligible IHG hotels, limited to properties costing 40,000 points or less (list of IHG hotels where it cannot be used). Although this added cap is a restriction, it is still usually easy to get more than the $99 annual fee in value, since 40,000-point hotels often cost $150+.
• Fourth night free on award stays: After you have this credit card, when you redeem IHG points for a stay of four consecutive nights, the fourth night is free. In other words, you only need 75% of the points for four nights.
• 20% discount on purchased points: When buying IHG points on the IHG website, you can get a 20% discount. This 20% discount cannot be stacked with IHG’s promotional points sales discounts or bonuses (often 80%). Also, buying points through a Points + Cash booking can keep your cost around 0.6 cpp anyway. So this 20% off benefit is basically meaningless. Summary of points purchase promotions
• Complimentary IHG Platinum status: Enjoy bonus points on stays, room upgrades, and other IHG hotel elite benefits.

The no-annual-fee version is more average, but it can still be decent to keep for no annual fee if you want the fourth-night-free benefit on award stays.

How to maximize IHG

Quarterly promotions

IHG usually launches stay promotions every quarter, sometimes offering double points, double elite nights, or extra bonuses.

• IHG Cyber Monday promotion: book 2 nights and get 10,000 points
• New IHG Q4 promotion: earn 2,000 points every 2 nights or 10,000 points every 4 nights

Timeshare presentation stay offers

IHG sometimes has excellent discounted stays tied to attending a presentation, so they are worth watching.

• IHG presentation stay offer: 3 nights from $149, plus 10,000 points back
• Introduction to presentation stays and Timeshare (ultra-cheap hotel stays)

Using corporate rates

As many people know, major hotel groups often have negotiated rates with large companies. Employees of those companies can use those rates when staying at the hotel, and these rates are often much lower than the standard rate.

• How to use a corporate rate: just enter the corporate code when booking
• Risk of using a corporate rate: at check-in, the front desk may ask you to show proof of eligibility. If you cannot provide it, you may have to pay the standard rate instead.

Specific corporate rate codes and related precautions will be covered in future articles.

Stay reviews

• IHG Intercontinental San Diego review (redeemed with FN)
• Dêqên IHG Indigo: echoes of Moonlight City
• Changsha North Chen InterContinental review + food and activities
• InterContinental Los Angeles Downtown review — goodbye, and good riddance
• InterContinental Shanghai Jing'An review
• InterContinental Park Lane London review