IHG One Rewards is offering a bonus of up to 100% on points purchases. This deal is as good as it gets, so the offer is certainly worth considering if you’re planning a hotel stay. IHG One Rewards’ points bookings provide excellent flexibility for cancellation where needed.
IHG points can be leveraged into some cheaper hotel nights compared to what you would pay at InterContinental, Holiday Inn, Crowne Plaza, Indigo, and Kimpton Hotels. This guide looks at the latest promotions for buying IHG points.
At the upper end of the market, InterContinental, Kimpton, and Crowne Plaza hotel rooms can often go for hefty nightly rates, so buying points to redeem immediately offers a nifty way to potentially reduce costs. But with dynamic room pricing in play, it helps to do some research before you buy points.
Current deal: 100% bonus IHG points on purchases
- Expiry: purchase before 11:59 pm ET on 21 March 2023 (1:59 pm AEDT on 22 March 2023)
- Bonus: 100% when buying at least 5,000 IHG points before the expiry
With the 100% bonus on points purchases, the lowest cost per point is 0.5 US cents, with a total cost of US$1,500 for the maximum purchase of 300,000 IHG One Rewards points including the bonus.
Is this a good deal?
Given the current travel situation, make sure you’re only purchasing points with a specific use in mind. See our ‘offer history’ below for details.
Sometimes with IHG hotels, certain room rates are far cheaper just to book outright with cash than to book with points, especially if you are buying IHG Points during a promotion specifically for that purpose.
Towards the bottom of this guide, we have an example of a booking where it’s not advisable to use points—read on for some tips.
Offer history
Previous promotions over the last few years have run as follows:
| Date | Bonus offer (%) | Lowest USD/point (cents) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| February 2023 | 100 | 0.5 | lowest price |
| September 2022 | 75 | 0.57 | |
| February 2022 | 100 | 0.5 | lowest price |
| September 2021 | 100 | 0.5 | lowest price |
| July 2021 | 90 | 0.53 | |
| June-July 2021 | 100 | 0.5 | lowest price |
| May-June 2020 | 100 | 0.5 | lowest price |
| January-February 2020 | 75 | 0.57 | |
| Average | 92 | 0.570 |
Unfortunately, IHG One Rewards has transitioned to dynamic award pricing, so we can’t accurately tell you how many points are needed for a particular night at a property. But you can easily check this out before buying points. You’ll want to run the numbers for your intended redemptions and compare points purchasing vs a paid stay to ensure you are better off buying and redeeming points than paying outright.
However, like other hotel program redemptions, IHG One Rewards redemptions are flexible and can be cancelled at no cost.
This is a big difference compared to the lowest paid rate, which is usually non-refundable, so if the flexibility of your reservation is important, don’t forget to factor that benefit in.
Things to know about buying and using IHG One Rewards Points
The terms of purchase for IHG One Rewards points state that you can buy a maximum of 150,000 IHG One Rewards points per calendar year and receive as a gift a maximum of 150,000 points per calendar year. However, the maximum annual points purchase amount is often boosted under specific points promotions.
You’ll also need to allow 24-48 hours for points to post and appear in your account.
There’s no requirement I know of around the age of an account that’s eligible to buy points, so you should be able to sign up and purchase immediately if it makes sense to do so.
You’ll find that the rooms on offer using IHG One Rewards points in each hotel are usually the base room type. If you’re after a premium or larger room, bear this in mind. I have had some success in contacting the hotel in advance to try and pay my way up to a better room – it’s worth a shot.
An example of where it could make sense to buy points
Buying IHG Points can be useful if you’re just topping up your existing balance or using it for a property where the cash price of the room is high and you can get a reward room from less.
Here’s an example. Looking in June 2023, four nights at the Crowne Plaza in Osaka comes to 24,500 points or AU$315 per night, all-inclusive.
With cash, that’s $1,260 for four nights. With points, you’d need 98,000 IHG points with nothing more to pay. But when there is a 100% bonus on purchasing points, you only need to purchase 49,000 points at a cost of US$490 (AU$720) to book the same four nights. That’s a saving of 43% over the cash price of the booking, so in this case, it could be a good idea to buy the points.
Summing up
As with any points purchase promotion, you need to run the maths for your own intended redemption and personal circumstances to see if this will yield some good value for you.
It will be harder to get great value out of the top-category points redemptions if buying points outright to redeem, but it’s worth keeping it in your back pocket in case you need to stay at a city hotel at a super expensive time of year.
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Offer is on again, but 100% bonus. 1 July 2025 – 17 July 2025
Given points bookings are refundable, wouldn’t it make more sense to compare the cost of a points booking to a flexible rate cash booking. The cheapest rates advertised are usually non refundable.
This offer does not appear to work (for me at least). The link it takes me to is https://storefront.points.com/IHG-rewards-club/en-GB/buy. This website doesn’t even recognize my IHG account (Something went wrong. Please check your login information and try again.).
If I do go the normal IHG home page and log in (without issue) and go to my offers only an 80% bonus if offered. I am IHG Diamond + Ambassador.
Is anyone else having similar issues?
Same here, i can only see 80% extra points. Saying that, is it worth purchasing it via Amex then using the amex platinum points to pay off this charge that i’ve accumulated?
Me too.
Hi Brandon
A quick question – can we book a redemption on another person’s name. Say my friend has points in his account and can he book a room in my name.
Thanks
Hi CK, unfortunately, you can’t book a reward night in someone else’s name. He could add you as the second ‘guest’ of the room, but I can’t guarantee you would be able to check-in without him present.
It will be harder to get great value out of the top-category points redemptions if buying points outright to redeem. Thanks for your nice tips!
Article mentions PointBreaks promotions, but wasn’t that program closed-down earlier this year?
https://loyaltylobby.com/2020/02/03/goodbye-point-breaks-what-was-your-favorite-ihg-point-breaks-award-since-inception/
Got a great deal buying IHG points yesterday..booked 7 nights at #2 hotel on Trip Advisor in Augusta GA in Masters golf week this year (Holiday Inn Express Downtown).. bought 200,000 points and had 10,000 already
Used 30,000 points per night = 210,000 points…. So US$150 per night using mostly bought points
Regular Rate is US$800 per night for that week .. saved US$650 per night = US$4,550 saving!! who said you can’t get any bargains from buying IHG points!
PS all half decent hotels in Augusta that week are about US$6,000 or more
Just purchased 1k worth of ihg points but the transaction was cancelled by IHG. Has anyone got the same issue previously? This is very strange as my friend also bought the same amount of points and it went through successfully. Scratching my head.
Hi, do you know if Interncontinental Hayman Island bookable using points? If so, is it worth it (compared to paying cash)? Thanks.
Are you able totransfer from IHG to Virgin Australia and would that transfer be eligilbe for the current “upto 40%” bonus that Virgin are running?
You can transfer 10,000 IHG points to 2,000 Velocity points, which is terrible value. The transfer bonus ended on 10 June. If you want to pick up more Velocity points, then check this out.
Was all excited until I crunched the numbers for my upcoming stay in HK and the points option works out to be more expensive.
If your IHG Earning Preference is for an airline loyalty program, does that mean the purchased points go to that airline of your choice?
No, they’ll stay as IHG Rewards points until you choose to use them for IHG stays or transfer them to an airline partner.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the article.
I need to book a hotel in Johanessburg in Fenruary. There is a Hilton that I am interested in booking there. How do I find out how many points are required for rooms there, and if they are available for points booking?
First thing – this promo is for IHG (Intercontinental Group) hotels, not for Hilton. Similar points purchase deals for Hilton are covered here.
With Hilton, sign up for an HHonors account if you don’t already have one, or log in if you do. Then search for that hotel using their normal booking engine at hilton.com, and look for the option to ‘Use HHonors points’ where you’ll find pricing and availability.
Score, I bought points to top up my account that had 22000 to go to a U.S booking. After running the maths I bought points to go towards a four night stay at the Hamilton Crowne Plaza in DC for March. I saved $400 all up even after the points purchase, I’m happy with that.
I tried to buy points last week. However my transaction was subsequently cancelled as few days later. I used my 28Degree card. I spoke to 28degree who approved the purchase, however it was rejected by IHG for some unknown reason.
Hi Keith, note that rates for Intercontinental Melbourne and Sydney (and many others, not sure about those on your list) have recently gone up.
Thaaaanks. Will correct.
Hi Keith,
Thanks for the article. Great offer. However, I made 2 separate purchase for the points using my Amex Plat Charge card (before the end date of the offer) and I received a notification email (after the offer has ended) saying both transactions for points purchase has been cancelled. Point to note for future offers—> the points are not available directly after purchase (unlike AA).
Just got off the phone with IHG Reward Club and they say its most probably due to the credit/charge card payment not going through because of the card. I offered to book with another card and they say they cannot help because it has to be booked through the website and the deal is no longer available.
Very disappointing indeed. I am not sure why the transaction did not go through. Maybe I have to check with AMEX.
With regards to the value of this deal, I’d say you would have to do your own comparison/homework. We are planning a multi city trip in 3 countries. By searching through all the cities and dates, I found savings from none to paying $3## per night (through buying points) instead of paying $1492 per night (when book directly through IHG or other travel websites).
Thanks again, Keith and team. Great work.
Agree, first port of call would be to check with Amex. That said, points.com process these payments and have had problems processing Aussie cards with Alaska before, so it could be on the points.com side too.
Including some of the hotels in your table…
Can you please update the table with some of the hotels that charge 60K per night?
Thank you!
Heya!
Don’t forget, a lot of IHG hotels have gone up to 60000 Points per night…. 🙁 🙁 🙁
I made the most of this in November, booked 3 different Holiday Inn Express in Colorado and Utah saving about 50% on the best prices I could get. So much opportunity for small towns where bigger hotels don’t have a presence. Also much nicer than the alternatives I was going to have to settle for.
Hi Ben,
Great article – i used this promo a few years when the aussie dollar was in parity the greenback. Now in all searches i did for an upcoming holiday in europe ( which i redeemed thanks to this site) its cheaper to buy direct.
Buyer beware on this promo i must say
Hi Keith
Im a bit confused by your numbers – you’re basically saying unless you want a flexible rate its always cheaper to just pay the revenue rate instead of purchasing points? What was the point of the article then?!
Hey Ben – I’m saying that it depends on the revenue rate for the night you are considering as to whether it makes sense to buy points to redeem. In some cases it won’t make sense, but in some it can make great sense!
For example, the IC Melbourne has been going for upwards of $500/ night when I have been looking for nights around the GP in the last couple of weeks. A points purchase and redemption would bring that cost down.
Same for the IC Wellington in February around the time of the cricket World Cup – this was up to $400 AUD.
These are just two examples off the top of my head.
Hi Keith, are taxes included when you use points (or Points + Pay)? If they’re not an additional cost I might be able to get a few good deals in the USA when I go there later in the year, otherwise I’m only breaking even at best with the 60% promo!
AFAIK they are included and what you book is what you pay in terms of points/taxes. Same advice as my Virgin American post though – if you want sanity, double check with the hotel to be sure!