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IHG Rewards Club has announced the latest category changes for its hotels. The changes are quite extensive (impacting hundreds of hotels) and overwhelmingly negative, unless you have a lot of travel planned in China and India.

The good news is that you can book using the current rates until 14th January 2017, so it is definitely worth taking the time to flick through the changes in full and make bookings now for any hotels you might be staying at that are going to require more Points in future.

Requiring more Points

• Some of the remaining redemption gems in the UK – Holiday Inn Wembley will be 25,000, Staybridge Suites in London will be 40,000, Glasgow Holiday Inn Expresses increasing etc.
• Redemption ‘sweetspots’ in Europe – Portugal is particularly badly impacted (two Holiday Inns in Lisbon moving from 15,000 to 25,000 Points!), increases in Dublin, Barcelona, Italy etc.
• Australia – 5 changes, all requiring more Points
• Lots in the USA – with a number of the Intercontinental hotels (Boston, Washington DC, LA) moving to the top category, which means 60,000 Points per night.

Requiring Fewer Points

• Aberdeen
• Outskirts of Madrid
• Lots in China
• Some in India

Bottom line

I have a bit of a love/hate view of IHG Rewards Club. The bonus Points promotions are still (usually) generous enough to keep me coming back, and when a hotel you actually want to visit is on the PointBreaks list (I recently stayed in Hamburg which was great!) it’s incredible value.

On the other hand, the promotions are getting a bit tighter and there are far fewer redemptions ‘sweetpots’ (apart from PointBreaks) than there used to be. The latest changes continue that trend.