How does IHG Business Rewards – the small business and PA loyalty scheme – work?

Not many people know that IHG – owner of the InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza etc hotel brands – has a scheme aimed at travel bookers and small businesses.  It is called IHG Business Rewards.

IHG Business Rewards was launched five years ago and replaced the old UK IHG Meeting Rewards scheme as well as three other regional schemes used elsewhere in the world.

Full details can be found on the IHG website here.

How does IHG Business Rewards work?

IHG Business Rewards is a very simple scheme.

The person who makes a hotel or meeting room booking – but who cannot be the traveller themselves – earns 3 IHG Rewards Club points per $1 spent. 

We value IHG Rewards Club points at 0.4p.  This means that the travel booker gets 1.2p of points for every 78p ($1) spent.  This is a decent deal given that, for room bookings, the traveller also earns their points as usual.

These are deposited into the personal account of the booker.  Accounts cannot be opened in the name of a company.  There is a cap of 60,000 points per event but, given that you would need to spend $20,000 to hit this, it is unlikely to be a major problem.

It is worth noting that, for meeting or events where multiple people may be organising, the rules allow for the IHG Business Rewards points to be split between two people.  This needs to be agreed in advance in the contract for the event.

The rules state that points may take up to 45 days to arrive.

IHG Business Rewards is bolted on to an existing IHG Rewards Club account, so a travel booker does not need to have two separate account numbers.

Points earned via IHG Business Rewards DO count for elite status.  However, they do not qualify for any elite status bonus.  A Spire Elite member earns the same amount of points as a base level member.

I presume, if you are a very small family business, you could potentially set your partner up as the booker if you are the one who undertakes most of the travel.

The list of participating hotels in IHG Business Rewards is here.

You can sign up via the IHG Business Rewards website here.

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.