The IHG Premier’s Big New Offer
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Tl;dr: This is the highest-upside offer ever on the IHG Premier, but other offers could get you more free nights.
The IHG Premier is one of our favorite cards, and it is out now with a big new offer: 5 free nights after spending $4,000 in the first three months after opening your account, with each night being worth up to 60,000 points. That means if you max out each free night, this offer could be worth 300,000 points, a huge increase over the standard 140,000 point offer. So, is this the IHG Premier’s best-ever offer?
Maybe, if you prioritize premium experiences
If you want to maximize the face “value,” in dollar amount, this is a great deal. The free nights are limited to 60k points and can’t be topped off; on multi-night stays, every night will have to be under the 60k point threshold. So you can expect some breakage on that offer. Even so, you’ll have the opportunity to book some very upscale stays.
For example, a weekend stay at the InterContinental New York Times Square in early August costs 55,500 IHG points per night. If you were able to spend all 5 free nights there, that would make this offer worth 277,500 points–far more than the typical offers. And with nightly cash rates coming in at $421, that offer would be “worth” about $2100.*
So if you want to live the high life for a bit, already pay those kinds of prices on hotels, or have some travel plans coming up in an area where hotels tend to be expensive and deals hard to find, this is a fantastic offer.
No, if you prioritize free nights and flexibility
On the other hand, if you simply want to get more free travel, taking points rather than nights could be a better deal. The Premier has offered as many as 175,000 points, but even the standard 140k point offer might be better.
Fancy hotels might be nice, but I don’t like to pay the premium for them when I can get a clean and comfortable room for much less, so a $400 hotel isn’t worth $200 more than a nice $200 hotel to me. I’d rather be able to spend more nights in the cheaper hotels for free rather than paying cash to sleep.
Especially if you travel in less expensive areas, you can transform a points offer into many more nights worth of hotel stays. For example, the Holiday Inn in Arlington, Virginia near DCA can be booked for 16,000 points per night during the same weekend in August. Even the standard 140k point offer would allow you to stay there for 8 nights on points alone–if you took advantage of the card’s 4th-night free benefit on rewards stays, you would be able to stretch those points into 10 days worth of stays. If you picked up the 175k point offer, you could stay for about 13 nights. Of course, the cash value is much lower: at just $95 per night, redeeming the points that way would be worth “only” $1,250. But you would be able to spend nearly two weeks in DC for free.
And that’s just DC. If you can find cheap airfare, you could spend multiple weeks for free in many destinations:
If you earned the 175k welcome offer (plus the minimum of 12k points you would earn from spending to earn that offer), you could stay for over 40 nights (31 nights at 6k each is 186k points, plus 10 free nights with the 4th night free).
Plus, with the points you get flexibility. You could still book three nights at the InterContinental with those points (and then get the fourth night free with the card’s 4th-night-free benefit on points bookings), but you could also book a few more nights at a more moderately-priced property, or even use them to spend a few nights at an even higher-end property. Or you could spend the month in Jakarta. You can mix and match.
Conclusion
Although this offer has the highest upside of any offer in this card’s history, you can derive similar value from an elevated points offer, and will have much more flexibility to use those points down the road. Personally, I would recommend holding out for a 160k+ points offer on this card, but it’s a great card and if you’re looking to add it to your wallet, now is definitely a good time to do so.