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May has arrived, and that means that a new Accelerate promotion is with us. Joe wrote about this a couple of weeks ago. If the term “Accelerate” doesn’t immediately make sense to you, then you can read my beginner’s guide to the promotion by clicking here.
It appears that many IHG members have received a simple target this period. Redeem your IHG points on anything at all, and earn 1,000 points.
The other day, HfP ran a post on the subject. Normally I have a lot of respect for what Rob is writing, but this time he is simply telling readers to waste 200 IHG points on an e-book that nobody in your family will ever read. His advice only works for those readers who don’t even have 5,000 points in their account.
Here’s how I know… I reminded myself to cancel and re-book an IHG award reservation during the period of the promotion. Within minutes, my IHG account had an extra 1,000 points in it!
And my target was duly triggered on my Accelerate dashboard.
Amazing! Especially considering IHG’s usual IT “inefficiencies”. 😉
But of course I didn’t stay an an IHG hotel on 2 May, I just made an award reservation, which you hopefully know can be done starting from 5,000 points thanks to PointBreaks, the latest version of which having gone live on Monday.
I can say with 100% confidence that I will keep those 1,000 points even if I cancel my award booking. Why?
- I’ve done it before… in previous versions of Accelerate (sometimes prior experience is all you need)
- The speed of the triggered target surely means that IHG’s algorithm searches for any use of points. And a cancellation of an award booking doesn’t result in the annulment of the redemption, but instead looks like this:
So, do yourself a favour and save those 200 points. Just book any award stay using IHG points. Then after awhile, you can cancel it if you don’t actually need it. 1,000 points should arrive into your account almost immediately and I promise you that it won’t be reversed.
Great idea. I have a family stay in London booked for early June, points only. So I’ll look at cancelling the existing booking and making a new one for the points redemption.
Double check for award availability first. But indeed what matters is the date of redeeming points, not when an award stay takes place.
Great advice, as ever, Craig! Just booked a random Friday night somewhere, after checking cancellation policy carefully and cancelled 5 minutes later once I saw 1,000 points hit my account.
Some caveats to consider;
* While most Rewards Nights bookings can be cancelled up until 4PM the day before arrival, this can vary on properties with high demand. For example, I have a Reward Night booked at Holiday Inn Wembley for a concert, and that is not cancellable
* I’m not sure what risk there is of a property having no more Reward Nights available. Even if you cancel one booking, would a Reward Night definitely be available for you to re-book straight afterwards. I’d suggest if there’s any doubt (and you have the points) book somewhere else random that can be cancelled, rather than risk a stay that you actually want/need.
You should never count on the award space coming back again. IHG DON’T use the standard room = available with points system.
Always best to make a second booking first, then cancel the first. Or, as you say, just book a random hotel for a far off date.
I did exactly as you suggested Craig, booked the duplicate stay for the redemption bonus, and then cancelled my existing stay. As you said, the accelerate bonus points are showing complete.
Thanks very much.
So you are killing the reward space that someone else could have used 🙁
That only really applies to PointBreaks.
For regular awards, it would be much rarer (but not impossible I admit) for a hotel franchise to be so stingy with award space as to consider a cancelled award as within the 5% of rooms it must provide as awards each night. https://insideflyer.co.uk/2018/02/pointbreaks-economics-ihg-rewards-club/
James I don’t understand; I’ve booked a duplicate room to get the bonus points, but cancelled the original one once I had confirmation, so I still only have one room / booking.
I mentioned to Raffles yesterday, that someone seems to have ‘fixed’ their IT.#
Points and Cash booking also posted to Accelerate immediately, but book on the App targets dont.
Nice one.
I’m always nervous about the App one, but I can sort of see why they want the actual stay to happen. I’ve long been wondering whether I could uninstall the app, get a new phone, whatever… to stop getting the target that costs me so much cashback.
You’d still get the target I’m sure. They all want to push their apps. I’ve got book 2 stays on the app this time but I’ve done one for the points/cash target so no cashback on that anyway.
Interestingly I got the “get the IHG credit card” in my last Accelerate even though I already had one. The target tracked straight away on the 1st of the month.
As an aside I used the guaranteed room availability for Platinum members last week for the first time. Nice guy with an Irish accent (not the usual call centre) sorted it for me in a matter of minutes for a hotel that was fully booked. Even got offered a choice of rooms at the IHG member discount rate.
Yeah, I get the credit card one all of the time as well, even though the only part of me resident in the UK is my post box service and I’ve already been rejected for that credit card. I’ll have to move my IHG registration to another country I think.