Is There A Benefit To Using A Hotel Reward Scheme, such as the IHG Reward Scheme?

Whilst in a difficult period financially, and investing in our trusty tent for holidays, we started to think about what steps we could take towards restarting family travels abroad in the future. Along with deciding to collect Avios points towards flights and maximise the British Airways Loyalty Scheme, we also decided to sign up to the International Hotel Group Scheme (IHG One Rewards) for accommodation rewards.

Believe it or not, this blog is not sponsored by the International Hotel Group…but it should be!

Deciding to commit to a hotel reward scheme

Another long term project

As with trying to maximise an airline scheme, my first advice is to view collecting hotel points with an hotel Reward Scheme in the same way, as a long-term project – resist the urge to redeem your saved points to early, and keep them in the pot, ready to use on a significant trip, or special hotel, further down the line.

Every time we stayed away for work or some other reason, we opted to stay in an IHG Hotel and very quickly the points began to build up…

Our experience – We collected points with IHG One Rewards for 3 or 4 years before redeeming some of them for hotels on a family road trip holiday in Ontario and Quebec, Canada. We were away in Canada for 3 weeks, using our IHG One Reward points to book 7 nights of free accommodation, leaving us with only 2 weeks to pay for, which helped our budgeting.

Which hotel group should you choose?

Well, all of the big hotel chains have a reward scheme of some description – Marriott Bonvoy, Hilton Honors, World of Hyatt, Radisson Rewards, Best Western Rewards, to name but a few. So which hotel reward scheme you choose really boils down to a few factors:

• Travelling for work – if you’re travelling for work then you might not need luxury accommodation, particularly if your company is picking up the tab;
• Where you do most of your travelling – some hotel groups have different coverage in different countries and so this might affect your decision;
• Affordability – depending on your budget you might be happy with a chain with lots of luxury brands, or you might need something more affordable;
• Personal taste – you might prefer one hotel vibe over another.

We happened to fall into the IHG One Rewards programme for the International Hotel Group by accident, as during the period when we started collecting points we were mainly booking Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza hotels in the UK which is where we started to earn our points.

Since then, the brand has served us well and so we have continued our loyalty to their hotel brands, which is why the blog below is referencing IHG One Rewards.

Why save with IHG One Rewards?

Good range of hotel brands

The best thing about the International Hotel Group is the large range of hotel brands in 6,000 destinations under its umbrella – currently has 19 brands, although this seems to keep expanding on a regular basis.

The brands cover a broad spectrum of hotels meaning that there is usually a hotel for whatever purpose and budget you have – from the more basic (Holiday Inn), to business hotels (Crowne Plaza), boutique hotels (Kimpton hotels) high-end luxury hotels (Six Senses), and everything in-between.

Our experience – We have accessed a variety of the brands for different purposes. If we want to stay somewhere functional for a night before a flight or early ferry crossing, then the Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express or Crowne Plaza brands service us well; if we want to stay somewhere nice for a city break then we like the Kimpton brand, or for more something more special, the InterContinental hotels. We are still working our way up to the Six Senses!

We have stayed at some lovely Kimpton Hotels, such as the Kimpton Surfcomber Miami Beach, Kimpton de Witt Amsterdam, Kimpton Blythswood Square Glasgow and Kimpton Clocktower London. The hotels are all different in style, some are smart (Kimpton Hotel Monaco Seattle) and others a little bit quirky (record players and vinyl in the bedrooms at Kimpton San Francisco Wharf), but they all have character, and interestingly a wonderful signature smell which you can buy diffusers for! Some of the hotels offer a Social hour when there are free drinks in the foyer, or lobby, which is a nice touch.

Elite membership levels of IHG One Rewards

There are 5 levels to the IHG One Rewards loyalty scheme with different benefits for different membership levels:

• Club (Non Elite) – the starting level of membership;
• Silver Elite – 10 qualifying nights per calendar year;
• Gold Elite – 20 qualifying nights or 40,000 qualifying points;
• Platinum Elite – 40 qualifying nights or 60,000 qualifying points;
• Diamond Elite – 70 qualifying nights or 120,000 qualifying points.

The benefits of each level are set out on the IHG website, but basically the higher your Elite status, the faster you accumulate points and more benefits you can unlock.

The different hotel brands seem to vary in how many points they allocate for the money spent per night, so check what the points allocation is for the hotels you are looking to book.

Note – IHG points do not expire for Elite members, whereas they do for Club members if they don’t use their IHG account for 12 months.

Reward Night Stays

The main benefit of using an hotel reward scheme, in this case IHG One Rewards, is that you collect points when you stay at an IHG hotel which you can redeem on future night’s accommodation – free Reward Night Stays. In some cases you can use a combination of your Reward points and money as payment.

Other benefits of IHG One Rewards

Some of the other benefits of IHG One Rewards (not an exhaustive list) include:

• Early check in (subject to availability) – for Platinum and Diamond Elite members.
• Late checkout (subject to availability) – a late checkout of 2pm can be extremely useful depending on your schedule.  
• Upgrades (subject to availability) – may be offered on arrival to Platinum and Diamond Elite members, only one grade of room up from the one booked.
• Drinks vouchers or points – offered free drinks vouchers or points on arrival (Platinum and Diamond Elite).
• Free breakfast – offered free breakfast instead of the points (Diamond Elite).
• Dedicated support phone line – Diamond Elite members only.

Milestone Rewards – in addition to the benefits above, IHG One Rewards offers Milestone Rewards, where on your first 20 nights booked with IHG, you will be awarded a Milestone Reward as a thank you, such as, food and beverage vouchers, extra points, or a suite upgrade. Thereafter you will receive a Milestone Reward after each subsequent 10 nights, so at 30 nights, 40 nights and so on.

Points purchase – you can buy up to 150,000 points to help you secure the rewards that you want.

Avios – you can earn Avios, rather than points, by changing your preferences from points to miles on your IHG One Rewards account, or convert points to miles at a later stage by contacting IHG customer services.

Have a strategy for points redemption

Our strategy for points redemption with the hotel reward scheme is now as follows:

• Not to redeem points on UK stays, but to save them for overseas travel (we did initially until we got going with the scheme but now we save them for overseas stays).
• Offered drinks vouchers or points – bank the points!
• To book hotel accommodation across the IHG range on each longer trip so we have a mix of the more basic, along with some treat stays.

Example – on our road trip of Ontario and Quebec mentioned earlier, we stayed in 2 x Holiday Inn Express (Ganonoque and North Toronto), 1 x Crowne Plaza (Gatineau, Ottawa) and 3 x InterContinentals (Montreal, Toronto Centre and North York Toronto). This was complemented with 3 nights of wild camping, an old hotel in the mountains and a posh Relais and Chateaux hotel.

The kids enjoyed the quirky things we discovered on our stays, such as, the microwavable pizzas in the foyer of the Holiday Inn Express outside Toronto, and the jacuzzi in the living room in Ganonoque!

The InterContinental Ambassador programme

Just to make things more complicated, or better whichever way you look at it, the InterContinental hotel brand runs its own loyalty scheme in addition to IHG One Rewards Scheme – the InterContinental Ambassador Programme.

The Ambassador programme however is not free, and currently costs around USD 225 a year, or you can purchase with 45,000 IHG One Rewards points. So, it’s probably only an attractive proposition if you plan to use the InterContinental brand a lot, to break even on the annual fee and move into benefits territory, which include:

• Platinum Elite status in IHG One Rewards (if you have not joined already)
• Guaranteed room upgrade – one category up only
• Complimentary weekend night voucher valid for 12 months.
• Late check out of 4pm
• Club Lounge access
• Single room rate for double room occupancy
• Restaurant and bar credits

You can sign up to the InterContinental Ambassador programme on-line or in person at an InterContinental hotel.

Having more than one option

Sometimes, your chosen hotel chain might not have a hotel in your chosen destination, so it’s good to be signed up with another hotel reward scheme, ideally with a large hotel group, to make sure that you cover all bases. As a result we recently joined the Marriott Bonvoy Hotel Reward Scheme and are just getting started with their benefits programme. Usually I start by looking for an IHG option first, before moving to Marriott Bonvoy if needed.

To be honest, both have good coverage and so between the two they seem to have most places, and budgets covered.

Final thoughts…

It is notable however, that the rewards were much greater coming out of Covid to encourage customers to stay in the hotels. Now that things are closer to normal, then the hotel reward schemes (and airline reward schemes) have recalibrated their rewards so they are slightly less generous, but more in line with pre-Covid years.

So, is there a benefit to using a hotel reward scheme? Well, I’ve written this blog from the perspective of being a member of the IHG One Rewards Scheme, but the principals transfer to other hotel reward schemes.

For us, the main benefit has been using saved points on free night stays – it always feels great to book free nights using your points, even if you consider that you have spent money in the first place with the brand.

After our initial experience on our Canadian road trip, we have continued to use the system of paying for hotels in the UK, banking the points, and then trading them in for free nights on holidays. We find that this benefits our holiday budgeting by keeping some of the costs down at a time when expenses can quickly build up.

In addition, sometimes we have enjoyed the benefit of an upgrade, but we see that as a bonus rather than the goal – the goal being to benefit from free nights above all else!

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