IHG are continuing with their personalised offers program for Q1 next year, and are even keeping the same name! (Not that that will get confusing when you're on the phone to them arguing about one of the offers that hasn't posted properly, as always happens, oh no....) Anyway, you can now head to http://www.ihg.com/content/us/en/offers/q1accelerate16 to see your personalised offers. If you're a new account, expect to need just a few nights stay to get enough points for a free night in an InterContinental hotel / nearly 2 weeks somewhere on points breaks! If you stay with them quite a bit, expect some stupid requirements that you'll never ever make While you can see your offers now, only paid stays (no points / cash-and-points stays) between January 1 and April 30 will count. For stay-based offers, you can book now and those will count. For things like "Book with the app", you'll need to do the booking on or after the 1st of Jan for it to count
As for my personal offer, having done 9 nights in 2015 (4 paid, 5 reward), and no stay longer than 2 nights, they've given me this challenge: Looks like 1 paid night in January, one paid night another time, both booked with the app, and an ebook redemption for me. I just can't see myself doing 10 nights, nor a 4-nighter. I expect I'll push most of my Q1 hotel stays to chains with more sensible/achievable promotions!
I did about 10 stays last year, which was down from previous year (change of job = change of travel patterns) and still got a pretty steep target IMO, with little reward: I saw a few easy wins; Got a 4 night trip to Berlin coming up, Crowne Plaza booked via the app Had a night in London this week, tried to book via the app last week, got an error in the app, tweeted IHG about it, got the run around (turn it off and on, DM a screenshot, email us something and then a 'we're really sorry' but nothing resolved) and then the rate went up by about £100. That's when I gave up chasing a few thousand IHG points and booked a Hilton instead.
Smart move. I have a real love/hate with IHG- the promotions are great but if something goes wrong, the customer service can be atrocious.
Ah, yes, IHG's "Customer Services". The 2015 Q4 accelerate promotion saw my offers include 9200 points for the "Corporate Account Bonus offer", for booking a certain number of nights using my Corporate rate. Only one slight problem - I don't have one! Contacted them on the 24th of August 2015 to flag this issue up. Yesterday, the 21st of January, almost 5 months later, they have finally credited me with the points for this impossible + incorrect offer. In that time, I've had to phone them half a dozen times, email them probably 20 times, and generally feel thoroughly "valued" with my (unin-) Spired status Ah well, at least the points from my first 2 IHG stays of the year posted properly and with the bonus Accelerate tasks, so I can ignore them until at least April + go stay with a chain that tries to offer a vague degree of customer service!
I might do one stay in January for an easy 12K or so if the opportunity presents itself. But not worth chasing in my view. Just to counter your experience, I got 2,000 points for taking out the IHG credit card in Q4 2015, which I did not do, so they at least have the ability to cock up both ways. How re-assuring!
Haha, yes I think 5 months just about beats my current record with them! I am still waiting for a refund from a best rate guarantee they managed to screw up (they didn't bother to tell the hotel, which was an interesting approach) though, which feels like it could end up breaking all previous records... The bonuses are so good though, I just keep coming back for more.
It can definitely work both ways too when they mess up - assuming I do get the money back at some point, I got 10,500 free Points from that stay
I actually prefer the IHG BRGs where the Hotel doesn't agree with them. If the hotel agrees, it's a comp'd stay, with no points or stay credit. However, if the hotel doesn't agree, then the hotel sees it as a paid stay and gives you full points+stay credit. Then a month or two later IHG (who did agree it was a BRG) refunds you the stay cost. So, free stay with points+stay credit, even if you had to float the the cost for 1-2 months, which I'd much rather!
Oh yeah - it's great when you know that's what is happening.This was a weird one where it transpired that they hadn't even contacted the hotel about it at all, so it was a bit of a mess to sort out. FIngers crossed it should work out fine in the end, but it is IHG...
Not sure if it's deliberate because they've noticed loads of us are ignoring our stupidly hard offers, or just another "great" bit of IHG IT, but... You might want to log into your 2016 Accelerate Dashboard and check what it currently lists your offers as. My "Your Achievement Bonus" has crept up by about 10% from what it was when first announced. Not enough to make me want to try for it, given the craziness of some of the targets, but yours might be enough of a difference to influence your plans! As ever with IHG, take datestamped screenshots of your updated offers, in case they fall back down to what they were before and you need to claim the difference...
Good call! My "Book 2 stays with IHG app" has gone from 2,560 to a *cough* whopping 3,800. Underwhelmed
Good old iHG! On a more general note, does anyone have any ideas why IT is often so bad in the travel industry?
5 out of 6 Accelerate targets hit (all via genuine business trips), and ~28K IHG points actually posted rather promptly.
