Use IHG Points At Competitor Hotel Chains

I know, this is a strange sounding concept, but it is what it is. IHG lets you use IHG points for non-IHG hotels. The question is whether or not it’s a good deal…

This was once again, brought to my attention by Rapid Travel Chai (thanks for being a continual source of content!). And since he told me about it, I’ve been messing around figuring out the pricing structure.

Here’s the deal:

Go to IHG Hotels Anywhere.

Then pick your destination, regardless of where there are IHG hotels.

It’s like IHG has an arrangement with a booking site like Expedia… a very crappy version. And then basically buys the room and takes your points. Thus, it pretty much is a price based booking.

Examples

Prices via IHG

Prices via Kayak

The thing is that we don’t know if IHG is getting the same rate as the other main OTAs, but let’s assume is is getting the same as Expedia.

With the NH Hotel,  it’s going for $92 on Expedia and 34,000 points. Basically 0.27 cents per point.

The Fleming Deluxe is going for $150 on Hotels.com and 44,000 points. Basically, 0.3 cents per dollar.

The problem…

This is a bad redemption for one main reason, IHG hotels have a much better deal. The InterContinental Vienna (which we’ve been to twice, and it’s really nice) is only 35,000 points. And it’s going for $215 a night! So the value is over 6 cents a point, double the value, in this case.

But that’s not where the value really is at.

Let’s take another example, where there are no IHG hotels, Zagreb. Here are the rooms on IHG Anywhere:

Then the same dates on Kayak.
The cheaper hotel is the “Hotel I” which is going for 21,000 points on IHG and $60 on Orbitz. The value is about 0.28 cents per point.

The more expensive hotel Esplanade Zagreb is 42,000 IHG points and $107 on Travelocity, which is 0.25 cents per point. Similar values.

Understand from a “value” perspective, it’s not great. After all, many of IHG’s nicest IC hotels are 50,000 points and worth a lot more, and 50,000 points via this portal seems to get you about a $140 hotel. Not a great trade off, but consider this: there are no IHG hotels in Zagreb.

There are places all over this world that have many hotels bookable online, but none of which are points hotels. This is an option to book rooms at other hotels for 0.25 to 0.3 cents per point.

More examples

Here’s a hotel in St Lucia.

50,000 points is what you’d pay for a top end hotel and it looks like the refundable rate is somewhere around $189 anyways. This really isn’t a bad value, and not much worse than an IHG top end hotel. Plus, the real value here is that there are no points hotels on St Lucia (that I’m aware of). And so in a sense, here’s a points hotel.

Another hotel in Lombok

While there is a category 1 Starwood on Lombok, not all of us have Sheraton points. And I mean, 1 points hotel is not a ton of options. So here’s a Novotel on Lombok for 33,000 points instead of $84. Not a great value per say, but if you want to go to Lombok and have a ton of IHG points, this is an option that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

Conclusion

Understand that you can at best buy points for .5 cents per point. In other words, if you are buying points, at best, you’ll be paying double for these hotels, which is a bad deal on so many levels. If you were booking through a traditional booking site you could perhaps earn points there or even BRG the hotel.

Therefore, if you are buying points, these hotels are always a bad deal. Personally, I never see a situation where I’d use my points like this. I earn my IHG points from paid stays and it’s hard for me not to equate the stay with a cash value. And it’s a bad enough exchange (for me), that I’d rather pay cash for these hotels.

However, if you’re just someone with more points than vacation time, then this could be a good use. I know a lot of people rack up more points from business stays than they can use. So if you’re doing your family vacation in a place without points hotels, you have my blessing.