IHG Rewards Club Reward Night Point Changes at 400 hotels: New high end categories introduced

As you know last night we gave you a heads up
on IHG’s imminent annual point changes being released today. Well
they’re out now and we now know which 400 or so hotels are either moving up or down in
the amount of points required for a redemption by 5,000 or 10,000
points. These new rates take effect on February 17th. So if you were
planning a redemption at any of the hotels on the list you’ll want to
redeem and book before that date if the rate is going up while you’ll
want to wait until after that date if you see a hotel is going down. In this release of point changes we see the introduction of new 55,000 and 60,000 point
levels, previously the highest redemption level was 50,000 points so
this isn’t great news for those higher end hotels around the globe. It’s
not surprising to see two of the most coveted IHG hotels (both in Bora
Bora) being pushed up to that new 60,000 point level from the previous
50,000.

Only two hotels are at the 55,000 point level, both in Australia while a total of 13 hotels have been pushed up to the 60,000 points level including those two above, the IC San Francisco, The Venetian and Palazzo in Las Vegas and two IC’s in Paris.

Overall out of the 400 hotels changing, the split is pretty even. We count (now corrected) 200 hotels moving down and 200 moving up. The areas hit with the most hotels going up are the U.S., the U.K. and France while China, Canada and Germany see a good proportion of hotels go down.

You can learn all about the changes and see the complete list of hotels here.

Now we have to be prepared over the next month or so for the annual changes from SPG, Hyatt and Marriott.