The IHG One Rewards program has dynamic award pricing, as is the case with many hotel loyalty programs nowadays. That means the program doesn’t have an award chart that’s updated when pricing changes, and as a result, it can be hard to keep track of devaluations. That being said, it does look like something has just changed…
In this post:
IHG One Rewards seemingly devalues points
As noted in this FlyerTalk thread, IHG One Rewards has increased award costs at many of its top properties. As an example, up until now, IHG has had an unofficial cap of up to 120,000 points per night for all non-resort InterContinental properties. However, clearly that’s no longer the case.
For example, the InterContinental London Park Lane is now charging 160,000 points on some nights.
Meanwhile the InterContinental Osaka has even higher pricing, and is charging 218,000 points on some nights.
As was the case before, the InterContinental Maldives (a resort, so not subject to that previous 120,000 point cap for non-resorts) continues to charge up to 250,000 points per night.
Meanwhile the Six Senses Kyoto (the most expensive points property in the IHG portfolio), continues to charge up to 500,000 points per night.
That’s just a small sample of award pricing, but I think it makes it pretty clear that something has changed.
IHG offers very few aspirational redemptions
Personally, I value IHG One Rewards points at roughly 0.5 cents each. What’s interesting to note is that the above redemptions aren’t actually that terrible of a value, in comparison to the cash cost of a stay. You’re typically still getting right around 0.5 cents of value per point, if not a bit more. For example, the InterContinental Osaka often charges $1,000+ per night, while the Six Senses Kyoto approaches $3,000 per night.
It seems like IHG is increasingly going in the direction of Delta SkyMiles, in just making each point worth a certain amount toward the cost of a purchase. That’s not the case across the board, but it’s more true than with other hotel loyalty programs.
To me, the beauty of aspirational hotel redemptions is that you can get outsized value by redeeming points at hotels that would cost a lot if paying cash, but the economics work when the hotels aren’t at capacity, so it’s basically another sales channel for filling rooms.
But if each point is just worth 0.5 cents (give or take) toward a redemption, then it’s much less tempting to redeem at a hotel that costs $2,000-3,000 per night. For that matter, it’s much less exciting to earn the points, since you know you’re not going to get some amazing value.
Then IHG just has the general issue of poor integration of properties. IHG has now owned Six Senses for several years, yet award redemptions still aren’t possible at many of the properties. That’s despite IHG’s very high award pricing at so many properties, and revenue based redemptions.
Bottom line
IHG One Rewards appears to have increased award costs at many of its premium properties. While it’s hard to know exactly what changed, one thing we can concretely point to is that the unofficial cap of 120,000 points for non-resort InterContinental properties no longer applies.
What do you make of these IHG One Rewards points requirement changes?
IGH points are half as worthless as Hilton Pesos points.
IHG on paper has a great program but in practice the points are, like you said, worthless just like Sky Miles.
Plus, the vast majority of IHG properties are mediocre Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn Express properties. Who banks their points to redeem at the Holiday Inn Express in Casper, Wyoming?
And then there’s the fact that Kimpton and Intercontinental both have their own quasi-programs that ooperate outside IHG’s supposedly unified loyalty program.
Hardly...
@Ben -- This is the real DCS. Please take charge of your site and stop morons like the one who impersonated 'DCS' below from continuing to make a mockery of it.
The moron picked up at least two of my comments from over at LoyaltyLobby and posted them here without permission, pretending to be me.
Hardly...
@Ben -- This is the real DCS. Please take charge of your site and stop morons like the one who impersonated 'DCS' below from continuing to make a mockery of it.
The moron picked up at least two of my comments from over at LoyaltyLobby and posted them here without permission, pretending to be me.
It is for such garbage and you inability or unwillingness to address it that I stopped commenting here. It seems that the same garbage continues. Well, I will not dignify the site with my presence, which some are clearly missing, but they cannot populate your site with comments stolen from competing sites!!!
Have some standards!
The most annoying commenter in the travel blog sphere is back!
They have to goose up their financial statements, and devaluing the points is done to try to grow the near-term profits and profit margins from the loyalty program.
lolz. To all those that recently bought IHG pesos.
PARTING SHOT:
"The problem with these programs that have gone dynamic and don’t have award charts is that you can never count on using your points for stays at one of the better hotels unless you earn points very fast."
That generalization is not warranted at all because all hotel programs do not implement "dynamic award pricing" the same way.
Notably, although Hilton went "dynamic" and dropped their award chart in 2017, Honors members...
PARTING SHOT:
"The problem with these programs that have gone dynamic and don’t have award charts is that you can never count on using your points for stays at one of the better hotels unless you earn points very fast."
That generalization is not warranted at all because all hotel programs do not implement "dynamic award pricing" the same way.
Notably, although Hilton went "dynamic" and dropped their award chart in 2017, Honors members still can to this date fairly predictably use their points to book award stays at low- to very high-end hotels just as they did before. The reason for this is that Hilton's "dynamic pricing" applies only to "premium" awards, while "standard" awards at individual properties are reasonably priced and capped, as I previously demonstrated in this space:
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As a result, it is still possible to get outsized redemptions values with Hilton points, especially on 5-night award stays, with the 5th night free.
P.S. Note that the yellow-highlighted slopes of the two lines on the chart directly yield the redemption values (1.38cpp for standard award, and just 0.29cpp for "premium" awards).
@DCS: Welcome back !
I agree that Hilton's standard awards use a reasonable amount of points and in my case, had a quite predictable availability. With advanced planning and a little flexibility, I was always able to stay at the desired property.
With IHG, I have gotten reasonable awards too at some locations. Some seemed to went dynamic already years ago (for example, Intercontinental Monterrey in California) and do not provide a value booked on points.
While the costs of high-end awards in most programs are going through the roof or becoming outright prohibitive, has anyone searched for Hilton standard awards in the Maldives lately? Well, I just did and was pleasantly surprised that where there used to be just 4 Hilton properties, the searches now reveal 10 properties, 6 of which are newly added SLHs, with standard award galore costing 150K points/night or less!
@DCS You never give up, do you? When will you finally understand that no one is interested in your Hilton patronizing comments?
I booked the Regent Phu Quoc recently for a great points rate.
Gonna work great in the upcoming recession
In ten years time there will be no value to hotel chain loyalty. It is very unlikely that any program will reverse course or a loyalty program with good value will emerge. Chains will keep using their remains elites’ sunk cost fallacies to milk what they can out of them until that well goes dry.
Welp, so much for dabbling in the IHG ecosystem. I'll just go back to Hilton keep up my Hyatt.
Post in the queue: Sign up now for highest bonus ever IHG card.
Those sky-hi prices are gonna crash soon enough - no one gonna pay them.
Or properties set them up so high that hey never get booked on points.
Either way - the demand might dry up pretty soon as TARIF recession is around the corner and will take time to go back to normal travel levels.
It's the latter point. Cash rates are also all time high because demand is through the roof. The top properties have been booming since the pandemic. They do not care about award stays. I've always valued IHG for random destinations where there happens to be a holiday in or similar for a night or two, not for their top properties.
IHG has been the bottom of the barrel for a while but people continue to make excuses for them since they run a ton of promos. I am starting to feel like it is a race to the bottom for all the hotel chains and once one company screws the "loyalty" customer the next will follow soon.
Cute that IHG thinks that anyone's going to have money in a few weeks.