intercontinental hotel's "big win" first quarter promo is up

IHG (intercontinental, crowne plaza, holiday inn, indigo, etc.) released their first quarter promo a few days ago. you can log in to their website for details. they ran a similar promo this year as well, which i didn't really participate in as i was gunning for platinum status with starwood.

all hotel programs have varying bonuses throughout the different quarters, and IHG has an interesting one for the first quarter. it gives you various tasks to complete (which typically involve staying at their hotels), and then collecting bonus points. what makes this offer neat is that it appears to be customized depending on your previous stay patterns. it could be that your offers are completely different than mine.

the promo runs from january 1, 2014 to april 30, 2014. the offers that i received were:

• stay more and earn: stay a total of 4 nights and earn 8,000 points
• explore our brands: stay at 2 different IHG brands and earn 16,000 points
• win in a weekend: stay 2 saturday nights and earn 8,000 points
• IHG mobile app booking: book 2 separate stays through our IHG app and earn 8,000 points
• stay smart: stay at 2 holiday inn hotels and earn 8,000 points
• survey the win: complete a simple survey and earn 100 points
• win big: complete 6 of your offers and earn 48,000 points

at the very least, everyone should do the simple 5-minute survey for the 100 points. if you are in a rush, the survey can be done in less than a minute by pushing random buttons. i don't think it cares.

for myself, i've already booked a stay at the crowne plaza changi airport for my 11-hour stay in february while i'm on transit in singapore. so in order to take advantage of this offer to its maximum, i'd simply need to:

• book 2 separate saturday nights via the mobile booking app for holiday inn properties -- luckily, i live 100 meters away from one
• book 1 other IHG hotel ... whichever one is the cheapest/most convenient.

in doing so, i'll earn 96,000 points. in my own experience, each individual point is worth roughly 0.5 cents (most major cities) to 1 cent (edmonton, alberta). sometimes they're worth more if you can catch their 5,000 point break specials. remember that when paying by points, it takes care of both the base cost of the hotel and the taxes.

at 96,000 points, that's worth anywhere from $480 to $960, all by booking 3 hotel nights. also, remember that you will earn points themselves for the stays themselves, usually at a rate of 10 points (5-10c) per dollar spent. it's something to consider.

priority club turns into the IHG rewards club

everyone was given notice a few months ago that priority club, the loyalty program for the intercontinental hotel group (intercontinental, holiday inn, holiday inn express, crowne plaza etc), would be rebranded and relaunched on july 1, 2013.

today, they updated the website. most of the changes, it seems, affect the way one earns status. i am currently a gold member without having stayed at an IHG hotel last year. by checking in online last year on foursquare using the topguest program, i earned roughly 16,000 points. i earned an additional 4,000 points by answering surveys from e-rewards, for a grand total of 20,000 points. until they recently changed the program, points from any source counted towards status. 20,000 points = gold status.

qualifying for various levels is still based on the number of nights stayed or the number of elite qualifying points earned. elite qualifying points are earned from hotel stays (excluding the elite bonuses) and various partners. as far as i can tell, e-rewards counts as qualifying activity.

• 15-49 nights a year, or 20,000 elite qualifying points = gold elite
• 50+ nights a year, or 60,000 elite qualifying points = platinum elite

there are a few slight changes to the new program including:

• free internet for every IHG member (even base level)
• like the starwood group, reward nights now officially count towards status
• if you achieve more nights than needed for platinum status, those extra nights will rollover to your next year. no rollovers happen for gold.
• fast track to elite: by staying at 3 different property brands, you can earn gold status for only 10 nights. by staying at 4 different property brands, you can earn platinum status for only 40 nights.

of course, we should not forget that you can simply buy their top tier platinum elite status for just $120 a year by holding their capital one affiliated credit card. so when i put things like that, asides from the free internet benefit, the program hasn't really changed at all ...

an edmonton roadtrip -- three hotels to choose from ... i hope i made the right choice

i'm making a roadtrip to edmonton today. my goal is to stay in the downtown region as that's where friends are normally staying. so here are my three choices:

1) days inn edmonton downtown: close to my friends' places and their work, free internet, free parking ($10 value). bookable on hotels.com and paying in canadian funds. total hotel cost: $130. big crumbs offers a 4.55% rebate, and hotels.com's hotelrewards gives back 10%. it's a days inn ... i'm not looking for something fancy. i've stayed there before, can attest to its general cleanliness, and its no-frills kind of feel.

2) holiday inn express edmonton downtown: two-three blocks further from my friends' location, parking is an extra $10. free breakfast is included. i have gold status with the intercontinental hotel group, not that it gives any additional value. they were booked solid until yesterday, when probably due to weather and flooding problems in southern alberta, cancellations happened. i would never pay $180 + tax for a downtown hotel in edmonton of all places. to be fair, in most places, really. but they had a nice points proposition:

the maximum amount that i would be willing to pay at most for a hotel in that area would be around $150. the days inn satisfies that requirement. however, for an equivalent hotel, i could get it for 15,000 priority club points (roughly $1,500 in hotel spending). this is their lowest tier of spending. this gives an approximate value of $0.01 per point.

you can buy points for this reservation: 10,000 points for 70$, or 0.7 cents per point, no taxes added. (keep this in mind when you're being offered a chance to buy points -- points should never be sold at more than 0.7c per point!). the alternative calculation is to say that for a hotel that I would normally pay $150 for, i can get it for $70 and 5,000 points. so that's an 80$ savings in exchange for 5,000 points. that means that each of your points is worth $0.016.

note that with reward bookings (prior to july 1, 2013), there is no stay credits or point earning potentials.
 
3) four points by sheraton south. this hotel is located 5 miles away from downtown, offers free parking, and no breakfast. booking on the spg mobile app would yield a 500 point bonus and double starpoints. it would also yield another stay towards my quest for spg status. but it is 5 miles away!

in the end, i was cutting it close to the refund deadline time on hotels.com, and i thought that if i had to walk towards my friends' place, i'd rather be walking two blocks less. so laziness prevented me from booking a potentially great value for my 15,000 priority club points. there will be other opportunities in the future, i'm sure.

buying top tier priority club status for just 120$ a year

i heard about the changes to priority club on one of my favorite blogs, view from the wing, and went to go check it out.

priority club is the reward program of the intercontinental hotel group. these include hotel chains like the intercontinental, holiday inn, crowne plaza, and hotel indigo. it used to be the easiest hotel chain in the world to earn elite status with. staying 15 nights, but more importantly, earning just 20,000 points in a year, would have gotten gold status. platinum status, with probable room upgrades, required 50 nights or 60,000 points in a year. and as with all the programs, if you're able to concentrate your hotel stays into one program, it's best to do so in order to gain status. status confers benefits.

it used to be the easiest program to get status in (which i value just to get no-contest late check out). i didn't even have to stay at any hotels because any point earned would count towards status. last year, i earned status via the topguest program which would give me 50 points daily by checking in every morning on foursquare. it was easy for me because i live approximately 182 meters away from a holiday inn. starting this year, they closed up the loophole to make only certain points count towards status.

so i went to check out the website and found out more. this, of course, is what i had read about earlier. nothing really exciting in the announcement. reward nights count towards status (similar to my preferred program, starwood preferred guest), and free internet to every member regardless of status.

but then, probably more importantly, i found out about the newest credit card offering for canadians in the priority club. the capital one priority club world mastercard. for a 120$ yearly fee, you earn 2 points per dollar spent (each point i value at 0.5c each). but probably the most important part was the fact that you earn platinum elite status just for having the card. it's the only card in canada which gives you a program's top tier status just for holding a credit card. it totally dilutes the value of platinum status if anyone can just purchase it for 120$ a year. this, of course, is a different story from america, where their credit card offerings are so much more generous ...

in the end, it won't affect me too much. i don't stay at priority club hotels often -- it's just the backup for when there's no starwood property nearby. i was already miffed when i was trying to book my hotels in SFO for may, 3 nights for 75k points. i was waiting for my e-rewards to post when, within a week, they devalued their points such that i needed 105k points instead. i'm still kind of sore about that. maybe if i was planning on staying at more holiday inns this year, this card would interest me more. but maybe others might find it useful.