IHG Rewards Club to offer 10 points per $1 at ALL InterContinental hotels

One of the oddities about IHG Rewards Club, the Holiday Inn / Crowne Plaza / Indigo etc loyalty scheme, is the way you earned points at InterContinental properties.

Until recently, whilst most of the other brands earned 10 points per $1 spent, you would only earn a flat 2,000 points per stay at any IC worldwide.

A couple of years ago IHG moved to an odd half-way house.  InterContinental hotels in North America moved to the usual 10 points per $1 whilst all of the others remained at a flat 2,000 points.

This was less important when ALL IHG points, including bonus points, counted for status.  Since the start of 2013, only BASE points count for status.  This has made it a lot harder to earn Gold or Platinum status unless you get it free from the UK IHG credit cards.  With status-earning points a lot harder to find there may have been a trading down from IC’s to other hotels by some guests.

Whatever the reason, the 2,000 point rule is going on 30th June.

From July 1st, any stay at an InterContinental – such as Le Grand in Paris above – will earn the full 10 points per $1.  As long as your stay costs more than $200 – which it almost certainly will – you will be better off under the new regime.

There is no mention of this change on the IHG website and they have not yet emailed members about it.  It is now written into the terms and conditions of the scheme.  If you do a dummy booking for an IC hotel it will also show the correct number of points under ‘Points to be earned from this stay:’.

One anomaly remains though.  If you stay in one of the two InterContinental ‘Alliance’ properties in Las Vegas (The Palazzo and The Venetian) then you will still only receive 2,000 points per stay.

IHG Rewards update – December 2021:

Get bonus points: You can earn up to triple IHG Rewards base points with IHG’s new Autumn promotion. It runs from 1st October to 31st December. You can register here and our full article on the offer is here.

New to IHG Rewards?  Read our overview of IHG Rewards here and our article on points expiry rules here. Our article on ‘What are IHG Rewards points worth?’ is here.

Buy points: If you need additional IHG Rewards points, you can buy them here.

You will get a 100% bonus when you buy IHG Rewards points by 4th January 2022. Click here to buy or learn more.

Want to earn more hotel points?  Click here to see our complete list of promotions from IHG and the other major hotel chains or use the ‘Hotel Offers’ link in the menu bar at the top of the page.