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Until Friday (28th April 2017) it is possible to purchase IHG Rewards Club for just ~£3.95 ($5 USD) per 1,000, thanks to a 20% discount on Points + Cash bookings.
Buy cheap IHG Points
If you haven’t come across Points + Cash bookings before, these are bookings that allow you to pay on a part points / part cash basis. For example, if a room normally requires 60,000 points for an award night, you will be offered a range of options to use differing amounts of points, making up the rest with cash. The normal rates are:
- 60,000 points
- 55,000 points +$40
- 50,000 points +$70
- 45,000 points +$99
- 40,000 points +$125
One of the quirks with IHG Rewards is that if you book a Points + Cash night and then later cancel it, you don’t get 40,000 Points + $100 refunded – you get 60,000 Points back into your account instead. This has become known as the points+cash+cancel trick. It’s a not-so-secret way of buying points at a discounted rate that has been around for many years.
Until Friday though, there is an additional 20% discount:
This means that 20,000 Points now only cost $100, or 0.5 cents per Point – which is a smidge under 0.4p per Point at the current exchange rate . This is the cheapest rate I can remember seeing.
You said hotel stays for under £20?
I did!
IHG’s latest Pointbreaks list should go live a little later today.
All Pointbreaks hotels require just 5,000 IHG Rewards Points per night, and you can buy 5,000 Points using the above method for ~£19.75.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that the Points + Cash + Cancel trick has been around for ages, I wouldn’t go mad and start making lots of Cash + Points bookings and cancellations, but a few would be entirely justifiable…
I just checked London Park Lane IC & points & cash rates aren’t what you stated: it’s still showing 55,000+$40 & 50,000+$70 & same @Paris Le Grand. No 20%price break & no offer for 45,000 or 40,000 at all. What gives?
Have you signed into your IHG account?
Cant seem to get this to work. I have signed up for an IHG account and have my membership details. I have picked a hotel with rewards nights but its not showing any 20% off discount.
I currently dont have any points, and cant see how i can buy points at the reduced rate. Any help would be much appreciated.
Very strange – I just had a friend without IHG status look for me and it worked fine. Try signing in, then heading to this page directly https://www.ihg.com/hotels/us/en/global/offers/member/pointsandcash_cyber and searching from there.
The terms don’t mention anything about new accounts not being eligible or anything like that:
IHG® Rewards Club members must be logged in to receive 20% savings.
• Must book Points & Cash between 4/24/2017-4/28/2017.
• Stay dates include 4/24/2017-5/31/2017.
• 20% discount is offered at time of booking and only pertains to the cash cost of bookings.
• Bookings for The Venetian® and The Palazzo® hotels are excluded from discounts.
• This offer is subject to the general IHG® Rewards Club membership
Let us know if that helps!
I’m not sure what’s going on. I thought it might have been targeted to IHG members with elite status, but I have access to a basic account and it also sees the discount. You have to be logged in though.