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Yesterday, the Deal Daddy wrote about a targeted fast track to elite status promotion from IHG Rewards Club. I’ve also previously written about a status match opportunity offered to US and UK based IHG members.
Elite status with IHG Rewards Club isn’t really anything special. Your main benefit would be bonus points – 10% for Gold, 50% for Platinum, 100% for Spire. Sometimes you can negotiate a late check-out, although the “subject to availability” clause ultimately lets the hotel do whatever they want. Occasionally you will receive a room upgrade, although frustratingly an “upgrade to the Club level” sometimes doesn’t actually entitle you to use the Club lounge, making it a non-upgrade upgrade in my mind…
But as I read Deal Daddy’s post, my first instinct was to think “but I can just buy Platinum status for less hassle than doing five paid nights”. All one needs to do is become a member of Intercontinental’s “Ambassador” programme, which will cost you $200 (£160) or 40,000 IHG points.
Ambassador is only useful at Intercontinental branded hotels, but it comes with Platinum status in IHG Rewards Club.
I would struggle to value IHG Platinum status at £160, as you would probably earn the status organically if you stayed often enough to extract sufficient value from the 50% bonus points. But if you stay at Intercontinental hotels occasionally, you might receive value from these specific benefits…
IHG Platinum status is the published benefit of Ambassador. But an unpublished benefit, or more likely a glitch, is that Spire members can magically extend their status by becoming an Ambassador member in December. For whatever reason, that makes them a “Spire Ambassador” for at least one more year, and occasionally for as long as you continue to renew Ambassador. A massive YMMV is appropriate, as this could be changed at any time…
The Bottom Line
You can sign up for Ambassador by clicking here.
If you fancy having Platinum status with IHG Rewards Club, but don’t have any upcoming IHG stays, don’t forget that you can simply buy the status via Ambassador…
Up until Hilton started to move towards a revenue programme, I was pretty much a Hilton man only. I think I’ve probably stayed at most Hiltons in Europe [and the few DoubleTrees] – with lounges. IHG as Spire: I’ve had good results all round. if you look at the Crowne Plazas available, a large number have lounges. Nearly as many Hiltons with lounges. And I’ve only had a couple of issues in the past couple of years getting lounge access as a Spire. And some of the lounges beat Hilton’s typical offerings every day of the week. IHG Spire is worthwhile if you focus on Crowne Plazas with lounges. And are polite.
So ………………you could get Platinum Elite status by paying $200, stay at an IHG hotel using that status then do a status match to Hilton Diamond?
In principle yes… as long as Hilton continue to match IHG Platinum to Honors Diamond.
From what I have read on flyertalk you can get an extra year of spire status by signing up for ambassador in ANY month, for whatever reason signing up in December gets you 2 extra years