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In the weird (and sometimes wonderful) world of IHG Rewards redemption pricing, there’s an opportunity to book an absolute bargain.
The new Intercontinental Rome Ambasciatori Palace, located just minutes from the Spanish Steps, is scheduled to open at the beginning of next year.
“Designed in the early 1900s by architect Carlo Busiri Vici in the neo-renaissance style, the palazzo building was originally home to ambassadors staying in Rome, opening as a hotel in 1993. Guests will benefit from its proximity to the city’s wealth of art and history, thanks to a prime position less than a kilometre walk from the Galleria Borghese, the Spanish Steps and the Trevi Fountain. The hotel can be easily reached from Rome’s Ciampino or Fiumicino international airports and is less than 10 minutes from the city’s main rail station.”
As you can see, the building looks rather charming:
And the renderings of the rooms look good too:
The hotel is scheduled to open in January 2022, but the really interesting thing is the fantastic reward pricing that is available from February.
You can currently book rooms in February and March 2022 for just 40,000 IHG Rewards Club Points per night:
That is an absolute steal, particularly when cash rates can be well over £400 per night!
Before the recent kerfuffle over reward night pricing, I valued IHG Points at about 0.4p each. In the example above, you’d be getting 1.1p per point – nearly 3 times as much!!!
For context, here are the points rates and cash prices for IHG’s other hotels in Rome on the same example date as the above:
But I don’t have any IHG Rewards Points…
This is one those relatively rare situations where it really could make sense to buy points. My account currently has an 80% bonus on points purchases (yours might be 100%), which means I could buy enough points for a 2-night weekend stay for ~£330 ($450).
I would therefore be paying £165 per night for a fully flexible booking at a luxury hotel in the centre of Rome. Not bad.
You can jump to IHG’s Buy Points page by clicking here.
Bottom line
I’m personally quite tempted by this. I haven’t been to Rome for a few years and being able to stay at a new Intercontinental without breaking the bank sounds ideal.
What do you think?
Already booked 2 room for 7 nights 😀 hope it opens on time!
Very nice!!
Website is now saying they are not taking bookings until 14 March 2022. Also the price has gone up to 100,000 points per night! I’m guessing the chances of them honouring my 2 bookings for late Feb/early March are slim to none.
Obviously they absolutely should, but with IHG these things are often a battle… If you can’t get anywhere with the hotel/IHG Rewards, feel free to let me know ([email protected]) and I’ll try to get the case in front of someone in corporate who might be able to help. No promises of success though!
Thanks Joe that’s kind. With 2 kids in tow I am not going to wait until we get there to find out if the hotel is open or not. I’ve emailed info@ic-rome, but no response so far.
I think we will probably cancel and use a chunk of the points for a weekend at Mr & Mrs Smith. Obviously not outsize value but quite acceptable at 0.4p. Somewhere like Chewton Glen would be a once-in-a-lifetime that otherwise would be totally unaffordable.
Post pandemic I am aiming for the all-inclusive Holiday Inn Resort at Montego Bay Jamaica. There can’t be many better IHG options with kids.
Hi Alex,
Did you ever manage to get anything from IHG here?
I also booked a long weekend mid-March and have now come back to check the IHG site 4 months later to see it says “OPENING 1ST QUARTER 2022 – The InterContinental Rome Ambasciatori Palace is now accepting reservations for arrivals on or after June 1, 2022.”.
Madness that, if they don’t open until June 2022, they’ve made no effort to directly contact people with earlier bookings and left us to find out ourselves… but wondering if you ever got anything from them before I contact asking the same!