Why IHG Rewards ‘bonus points packages’ are an easy way to earn elite status quickly

If you are looking to earn status in IHG Rewards, one of the easiest ways of doing it is by booking ‘bonus points packages’.

There are other ways to get easy status-qualifying points, as this HfP article explains, but the methods are fewer than they were.

When you are search for hotels on ihg.com, you will often – but not always – come across a situation like this when you select Best Flexible Rate (click to enlarge):

This example is from the Holiday Inn Slough Windsor.

You are paying an extra £17 for 5,000 IHG Rewards points.  This is worth doing just for the points – I value an IHG point at 0.4p, so you are getting £20-worth of bonus points.

Note that, in this example, the 5,000 bonus points are awarded per stay.  This means that it is a poor deal if you book in for more than one night at the higher rate.

These points also qualify for elite status

This is the real reason why you may want to book a ‘bonus points package’.

As well as counting towards booking a free night, the points you earn are ‘elite qualifying’.  This means that they count towards status renewal or promotion.

Do a few of these stays and the current reduced thresholds of 30,000 points for Platinum Elite or 55,000 points for Spire Elite can be well within your grasp.

Remember that Spire Elite triggers an additional 25,000 points bonus

One of (few) perks of having top tier IHG Rewards Spire Elite status is that you receive 25,000 bonus points.

There is a second option, which is gifting Platinum Elite status to a friend, but I think most people will take the 25,000 points instead.

If you value 25,000 IHG Rewards points at £100, as we do, then this is an additional incentive to book a few of these packages to get across the 55,000 status points threshold.

Is there an easy way of finding hotels with ‘bonus points packages’?

Yes.

IHG Rewards has a special landing page which will highlight hotels in search results which offer these package.  Click here to see it.

It isn’t totally user friendly, unfortunately.  You need to choose whether you want to see hotels with either 1,000, 2,000, 3,000 or 5,000 bonus points per stay.  There are also multiple variations of each package.  There is no ‘show all’ option, and no option to sort your search results to prioritise the hotels with the rate, but it is a good start.

As you begin to think about whether you will requalify for IHG Rewards status for 2022, assuming that there is no additional rollover, ‘bonus points packages’ could be part of your strategy.

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.