Last month IHG changed their Best Rate Guarantee policy. When I first heard this I was scared but it turned out to be a mild change, yet it definitely cuts out on a lot of abuse.
In case your unfamiliar with IHG’s Best Rate Guarantee (which must make you new to Travel Is Free (welcome!)) the basic concept is this – if you book on IHG and find a lower rate on a competing site, you get your first night free. Even if it’s a 1 night stay, it’s free. Even if it’s an awesome hotel like the InterContinental Budapest during a holiday week, it’s free. Even if it’s a Club Room to the shwank lounge at the InterContinental Dusseldorf, it’s free. (Hotel review coming soon). If you’d like to read more about this policy, check out the post on IHG’s Best Rate Guarantee.
Once per 7 days.
The biggest change is that you can only make one claim per 7 days. In other words you can’t get a BRG at the IC Budapest and then 6 days later do it again. Not 7 days before or after. Honestly, it’s a smart move as people were doing every other night at ICs and filling in the gap with paid stays.
Not within 50 miles.
Further more, you can not book a hotel within 50 miles in the next 7 days of a valid claim. So for example, you can’t go from a BRG at the InterContinental Budapest to a BRG at the Holiday Inn Budapest 7 days later. In fact, you can’t even go to the next town over if the hotel is within 50 miles. (Just to clarify, you could do a BRG at the InterContinental Budapest and then a paid or rewards stay at the Holiday Inn Budapest, just not another BRG).
How do you determine 50 miles?
“Within fifty (50) miles” means within fifty (50) miles when seeking directions between locations on Google Maps.” Google is so big that it’s now the deciding factor in our terms and conditions. I suppose this is 50 miles driving? Driving is never direct, so I guess this does limit how far 50 miles is, which is good.
Some might argue that the biggest change is submissions are now only available via the online form. No more phone call claims. This is a big deal in someways. The story of me reacting to a denial over the phone and changing a stay to add breakfast in order to remedy it, probably wouldn’t have happened with these new guidelines. The biggest thing is that I will never ever book a non-refundable again. Prices change by the time they get around to reservations and people get denied. Sure, you may have had a valid claim if they saw it when you did, but only the claims that are still accurate when they get around to it count. When you could call it in, then maybe you could get it seen then and there instead of being in a que.
To be honest, I’m not sure that calling is out of the question. Last week I had an issue and they transferred me to the BRG team. Perhaps the number still works, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that you can submit your claim over the phone or that you can have it expedited. I really don’t know. But I do know the team has a phone.
Those are the three biggest changes that I see. There are others in the wording, like clarifying the “same room”, which seems obvious to me. Same is same.
So what does this mean?
It means that you can BRG a hotel once every 7 days per city (or within 50 miles). However, you can book a stay of consecutive BRG nights if those nights are more than 50 miles apart. One night Budapest and the next night Dusseldorf? No problem.
Make sure things are exact, and submit submissions online. That’s the gist of things. Nothing to loose sleep over and overall smart changes by IHG.
I have a BRG stay Tuesday night (9/3) and tried to call the BRG number to verify that the rate was changed to free at the hotel. There’s no answer, just a recorded message saying to go to the website. To me, that’s an issue. I’ve had issues before in which the hotel didn’t respond to the initial claim and I’d have to have customer service call the hotel and get them to change the rate.
I’ve had this happen where the hotel didn’t change the rate and it worked out very well. I paid for the stay and IHG sent me a refund check (it takes a month or more). But the awesome thing is that I earned points.
Now that we don’t have the customer service phone line who do we contact to start the reimbursement process?
You also can no longer do any BRGs for a hotel within 50 miles of your own home.
I just started a BRG. According to the customer service person, the BRG department is located in Manilla, Phillipines and they do not have a phone nor any phone communication with the rest of IHG. Also she said the turn around is 48 hours after submitting the online complaint form and that they work 7 days a week including weekends. This means that one must book a refundable room at least 3 days in advance in order to cancel in order to not be charged.
Well, I think it generally does take less than a day. But that’s probably safer.
I think all their phone offices are in Manilla. Even Royal Ambassador line. I decided that this week…