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No sooner had I pressed ‘publish’ on an article stating that the IHG Best Rate has been destroyed, than I spot something suggesting that its demise may be somewhat exaggerated. The UK version of the IHG website makes reference to an ‘IHG Lowest Price Promise’ rather than the IHG Best Rate Guarantee – and the Lowest Price Promise still seems to offer a free night for successful claims!
As you can see in the terms here, the Lowest Price Promise is quite clear, “IHG will provide your first night’s room price free and, if the rate found is lower, match the lower average nightly room price found for that stay“.
Ordinarily, I would say that this is probably just old phrasing that hasn’t been updated to the new system yet, but there are a few reasons for hope:
- The IHG Lowest Price Promise is technically a different thing from the IHG Best Rate Guarantee – with a different name and terms.
- The Lowest Price Promise is limited geographically to: Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Georgia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Macedonia, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine and the United Kingdom only.
- The Lowest Price Promise terms include this crucial paragraph in relation to certain exclusions: “InterContinental Davos (until 31st March 2018), InterContinental Malta (until 31st March 2018), InterContinental Murcia Mar Menor, Crowne Plaza Vilamoura, Holiday Inn Algarve and Holiday Inn Andorra hotels are not included in the Lowest Price Promise, however the Best Price Guarantee does still apply to bookings made at these properties.“
The third point there is absolutely categoric that the two guarantees are different.
There are also two separate forms for making claims – if you want to make a Lowest Price Promise claim use this form here; if you want to make a Best Rate Guarantee claim use this form here.
Bottom line
IHG Rewards Club seems to be running two completely separate guarantees now – the Best Rate Guarantee which is global, and the Lowest Price Promise that applies only to hotels in the countries listed above. Whether this situation will last for much longer is an open question, but it’s certainly something worth being aware of for now.
Let us know how you get on with your claims under the different systems.
Of course it’s not dead and the LPP promise lives. However, the more blogs write about it the higher the chance of the LPP being scrapped also, so why not just be quiet about it?
Well, to be honest I want readers to be able to benefit from it – that’s kind of why I write about travel. There’s some stuff I wouldn’t publish because it involves genuine loopholes etc where there’s a real risk that writing about it might spoil it for others and so nobody benefits, but I don’t feel this is one of those situations at all.
IHG are (presumably) already well aware of their own policy, given they have dedicated LPP pages, terms and an enforcement team. If they decide that the policy no longer suits them, I doubt it will have anything much to do with me writing about it here.