Today officially marks the return of the Daily Getaways promotion for 2019, with an opportunity to buy IHG points at a discount.
How does Daily Getaways work?
Daily Getaways is a five week promotion that offers discounts and deals on car rentals, hotel stays, loyalty program points, theme park admissions, and more. This promotion has now been around for a decade, and has been very popular with travelers.
Every weekday during the promotion period new deals go live at 1PM ET. Some will disappear within seconds, while others will be around for a while, depending on how popular they are.
Buy IHG points for 0.5 cents each
Today at 1PM ET IHG Rewards Club points will be on sale. There are four types of packages available, all of which allow you to buy points for 0.5 cents each:
- Buy 10,000 points for $50 (410 available, limit five per person)
- Buy 35,000 points for $175 (440 available, limit four per person)
- Buy 60,000 points for $300 (425 available, limit four per person)
- Buy 100,000 points for for $500 (550 available, limit three per person)
As you can see, in theory you can buy up to 16 packages, and there are just under 2,000 packages available. They’re not selling nearly as many packages as last year, as in 2018 they had nearly 10,000 packages for sale. So they may sell faster this year than last year.
How does this compare to buying IHG points directly?
Typically when IHG sells points directly they offer up to a 100% bonus on purchased points, which would translate to a cost of 0.5 cents per point. So this is on par with the best promotions on purchased IHG points directly.
The added benefit here is that when you buy points through Daily Getaways it doesn’t count towards the cap on purchased points, which applies if buying directly through IHG.
Which credit card should you use for Daily Getaways?
In case you do decide to make a purchase, Daily Getaways purchases should be coded as travel, so you’ll want to use a credit card offering bonus points on travel.
Note that this includes the general “travel” category, rather than these purchases specifically being coded as hotels.
So consider one of the following cards:
- Chase Sapphire Reserve®, which offers 3x Ultimate Rewards points
- Citi Premier℠ Card, which offers 3x ThankYou points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card, which offers 2x Ultimate Rewards points
How long does it take for Daily Getaways points to post?
Daily Getaways says that IHG points should be posted to your account within 10 business days of when you make your purchase. So points don’t post instantly, but they don’t take that long either.
Bottom line
Buying IHG points for 0.5 cents each could represent a very good deal if you’re in the market for points. While I doubt these packages will sell out in a split second, I do think they’ll sell out much faster than in years past, given that they have only about 20% as many packages for sale.
Do you plan on buying IHG points with Daily Getaways?
A solid deal – I bought 3 of the 100,000 point packages. With the IHG Chase card getting 4 reward nights for the price of 3, this would mean you could get 4 nights at a top tier Intercontinental (70,000 points per night) for 210,000 points. Or $252/night. That is a good deal for IC Hong Kong and others that are routinely $300+/night for even a standard room. Indigo Paris would be equivalent of $200/night with this too! Not best hotel deal in history or anything, but pretty dang solid IMHO!
Thanks for the link Lucky!
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere on OMAAT, don’t forget that IHG engages in some minor Weaselling with Crowne Plaza brand hotels where points are concerned. The IHG site won’t let you book Single King bed rooms with Points, it only allows Two Queen beds room reservations. This happens even though both room types sell for the same nightly cash rate. I had the Crowne Plaza front desk simply change the room type after I had made the reservation using points. They did so on the spot without issue or complaint. Just be aware that, with Crowne Plazas, this can happen. Does IHG pull the same type of stunt with other (e.g. Holiday Inn) brands of its hotels? I dunno.
Only available for north American addresses; must use drop-down box for state, plus American zipcode and phone #. Returns ‘error’ otherwise. Poor show, IHG!
@Glenn: Considering that this is a promotion run by the US Travel Association, why should it be surprising that it’s available to US residents only?
Because, @Mike, IHG membership is worldwide, or didn’t you know that? Also the T&C’s do not mention any restrictions.
You know, it is arrogance, intended or otherwise, like yours that makes Americans so disliked throughout the world. Hell, 50% of y’all don’t even like the other 50% !
@glenn t: Again, this is a promotion run by the US Travel Association, not IHG, and the T&Cs on their website are pretty clear as to who can participate.
The fact that you must resort to personal attacks simply because I pointed out that this is a promo run by a US-based entity is wholly your problem.
@glenn t Calm down.
Anyone had their IHG points posted to their account?
@SW – yes! My points posted (was a separate transaction posting for each package I bought)
@Ted – I still haven’t received mine, should I be worried? I know it takes up to 10 working days.