How to Book an IHG Rewards Club Award Night

Intercontinental Hotel Group (IHG) Rewards Club points are one of the travel deals up for purchase this week at the U.S. Travel Association’s Daily Getaways promotion.

On Wednesday, April 6, at exactly 1:00 pm, four different IHG Rewards Club points’ packages will go on sale. They include:

• 15,000 IHG Rewards Club points for $90 – 1,000 available
• 25,000 IHG Rewards Club points for $150 – 1,000 available
• 50,000 IHG Rewards Club points for $293 – 1,500 available
• 100,000 IHG Rewards Club points for $565 – 3,850 available

In my post last Monday, “It’s Time for the Daily Getaways,” I wrote about being careful when purchasing points’ packages solely to get a “free” night or two (or more depending on the hotel category you choose).

The best value of any hotel points’ package is to use the purchased points to top off your current hotel points’ balance to get an award stay for an upcoming trip.

Say you were 12,000 points shy of getting five award nights at the Holiday Inn Resort Aruba – Beach Resort & Casino for your upcoming Caribbean vacation. You could continue spending on your Chase IHG Rewards Club credit card in an effort to build those 12,000 needed points, or you could hope you have enough upcoming business travel that has you staying at IHG properties so that you can bump up your Rewards Club points balance, OR you could simply buy the 15,000 points’ package via the Daily Getaways promotion. Do the latter, and, voila, your free weeklong hotel stay in Aruba’s done.

All that’s left is booking that oh-so-wonderful award stay.

Booking an Award Stay

If you’re familiar with hotel award stays, you likely don’t need to continue reading. However, if you’re new to using points to get free hotel nights, especially at IHG Hotels, the following may be of interest.

If you have a stash of IHG Rewards Club points, you can book free nights using those points at the following hotels: Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo, Even Hotels, Hualuxe Hotels (China), Crowne Plaza Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Resorts, Holiday Inn Club Vacations, Staybridge Suites, and Candlewood Suites.

As you can see, there are plenty of properties from which to pick when booking award nights.

First you need to select the destination to which you’re traveling. I’ll use Orlando, Florida and a six-night stay in late July for our example.

You’ll note, in the Rate Preference box, I’ve selected “Reward Nights” since we want the points, in addition to dollars, to show in the results.

The initial results list was quite extensive, so I refined the results by limiting it to 10 miles from Orlando, “Three +” rated hotels and “Available Hotels” for the dates chosen.

Even with refining my search, a number of hotels were returned. I limited those to Holiday Inns close to the major theme parks and airport.

As you can see, the results show the Average Nightly Rate for each hotel, below which is the number of IHG Rewards Club points needed per night.  That helps to show what value you’re getting for your points at a particular hotel.

The first listed hotel, the Holiday Inn Express & Suites: Nearest Universal Orlando costs 30,000 points per night, while the other three cost 25,000 points per night.

I’m going to pick the Holiday Inn Hotel & Suites: Across from Universal Orlando since it’s a better points/dollar option.

Clicking the Check Rates button takes you to the Booking Screen where you can select your room type (King Bed Nonsmoking, 2 Double Beds Nonsmoking or Standard Room). When using points, there’s really no reason to pick the “Standard” option, which is usually a discounted price because you’re taking whatever the hotel has available at check-in. With an award reservation, there’s no difference in “price,” so select the room you want.

You’ll notice that you can select a lower number of points with a cash co-pay. This can be a good way to stretch your points if you don’t have enough for a particular trip, or you just want to conserve points for future vacations.

Not all hotel chains offer a cash and points option, but IHG does – along with a few others – and it’s a nice option to have.

I’ll pay the full 25,000 points per night and select the King Bed room.

If you’ve not already signed in to your IHG Rewards Club account, you’ll be prompted to do so at this time.

Once signed in, you’re taken to the final booking page where you’ll confirm your contact information and be asked to input payment information to hold your reservation.  Even though your hotel room will be free, you’ll need to provide a credit card for the reservation and to cover incidentals that may be charged to the room during your stay.  Below that will be the details of your reservation, including the number of points that will be used for this example stay – 150,000 total – as well as the balance in your Rewards Club account after the deduction.

All that’s left is to click the Confirm Reservation button, and your free hotel stay, booked with points, is complete.

Getting More Points

The actual act of booking an award stay is fairly simple. The hard part is building the points in your hotel rewards account.

Currently, the Chase IHG Rewards Club credit card is offering a 60,000 point sign-up bonus after spending $1,000 on purchases in the first three months the account is open.

One really nice aspect to this card is the annual free night that’s provided on your account anniversary. The free night is good at ANY IHG property. Which means for the $49 annual fee, you could potentially get a free night at an Intercontinental Hotel with a nightly rate of $300 or more. Now that’s a good deal.

Aside from the IHG points earned from the credit card sign-up bonus and subsequent spend; points can also be accrued (obviously) through paid IHG hotel stays.

And, IHG is a transfer partner of the Chase Ultimate Rewards program, so if you have an Ultimate Rewards earning credit card – Sapphire Preferred, Ink business card, or a Freedom or Freedom Unlimited and either one of those first two cards – you can transfer the Ultimate Rewards points earned to IHG at a 1:1 rate.

And, if all of those points avenues are not enough, you can always jump on points sale deals like the one offered this coming Wednesday as one of the Daily Getaways.

Free hotel stays are a great way to make travel more economical. If you have any questions on building IHG points or booking IHG award stays, just ask. We’re here to help make travel less expensive and more accessible to all.